TOP 100 ENGLAND SITES
| |||
|
| |||
| |||
|
| |||
| Killing brain-damaged son 'not murder' Frances Inglis says she had no choice but to 'release' her son, Tom, as he was due to have his food and water withdrawnA mother has denied she committed murder when she injected her severely brain-damaged son with a lethal overdose of heroin. Frances Inglis, 57, tearfully told the Old Bailey she injected her 22-year-old son with street heroin in November 2008, but claimed she had "no choice".Doctors were considering applying to the high court to legally withdraw food and water from her son, Tom, who had been left brain damaged after falling out of a moving ambulance in July 2007. "I couldn't bear the thought of Tom dying of thirst or hunger. To me that would be so cruel – to die slowly like that would be horrible," Inglis told the court.With a date for trial looming over her for a failed attempt to end her son's life 14 months earlier, she decided she had to make sure her second attempt succeeded. The court had earlier heard she broke her bail conditions by visiting Tom in his care home using an alias, and then barricading herself in his room while she delivered the fatal dose.Giving evidence for the second day, the trainee nurse from Dagenham denied she was guilty of murder.She said: "I felt he lost his life when he came out of the ambulance. I felt that I was helping, releasing him. I don't see it as killing or murder. The definition of murder is to take someone's life with malice in your heart."I did it with love in my heart, for Tom, so I don't see it as murder. I knew what I was doing was against the law. I don't know what name they would call it but I knew that the law would say it was wrong."I believed it would have been Tom's choice to have been allowed to die rather than have the intervention to keep him alive."She shook with sobs as she said: "I had no choice, I had no choice. I would have chosen anything else, I would have done anything else."It is not that I wanted to do it, I had to. I couldn't leave my son there."Inglis said that after unsuccessfully asking a neighbour to help her source the drug to put Tom "at peace", she went on a mission to find it."I'd go to places where I thought maybe deals were made like Barking station and outside the jobcentre – I tried to find out where the needle exchange places were," she told the court.Inglis, earlier described in court as a "wonderful mother" who had previously worked with adults with learning difficulties, said she obtained needles and syringes from the hospital and researched on the internet to discover that two grammes of heroin would be a "lethal dose".She made her first attempt to kill Tom on 4 September 2007, when he was a patient at Queen's hospital, Romford.Describing the first incident, his mother said: "I held him, told him I loved him, told him everything was going to be fine, took the syringe, and I injected him in his thigh and his arm."Then he went to sleep. He was at peace. I stayed with him. Then he died, he was at peace," said Inglis, before breaking down and sobbing uncontrollably.She described her horror at discovering that doctors had resuscitated Tom after she left the hospital. It was like the doctors had "put a knife in" her, she said, adding: "It was the cruellest thing they could do to Tom."She told the jury how this failed attempt to "release" Tom made her all the more determined to succeed on another occasion.The case continues.CrimeHelen Piddguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Iraq war inquiry: military was 'hindered in preparations' to avoid publicity Former army chief of operations Sir John Reith says ministers avoided authorising actions that could be in public eyeBritain's most senior officer responsible for operations was prevented by the Blair government from preparing for the invasion of Iraq so the public would not know military action was being planned, the Chilcot inquiry has heard.Lieutenant General Sir John Reith warned Geoff Hoon, then defence secretary, that unless he was given the green light in a matter of days to charter ships, Britain might not be able to meet the US deadline for an invasion."I had a discussion with Geoff Hoon, because we had been ... saying that we needed ships up from trade, we needed UORs [urgent operational requirements], we needed mobilisation of the reserves and so forth, and it had kept being put off", Reith told the inquiry.Reith, chief of joint military operations between 2001 and 2004, testified in private on Friday, but the transcript of his evidence has now been placed on the inquiry website.He said he warned Hoon one day in late November or early December 2002 that defence chiefs needed a decision by ministers by the end of that week. The US had made clear it wanted to invade before the end of March "before the real heat of the summer came in", he said.Describing his meeting with Hoon, Reith continued: "I said, 'This is the deadline'. He said, 'You know, we need to keep our options open' and I said, 'Well, actually, if we don't go to trade [to charter ships] by the end of this week, then we don't have any options, we are not going'. He then went to the prime minister and we were then authorised to go to trade."Reith told the inquiry: "There was a reluctance to do things which would be seen in the public eye, and so, you know, things that I sensibly, as a military person, would have done much earlier, were just moving backwards bit by bit."Reith drove home the point. "We have to get it right and we shouldn't have such reliance on UORs."Hoon is expected to be pressed over the government's orders to defence chiefs not to alert the public that military action was being planned when he gives evidence to the inquiry tomorrow. Lord Boyce, chief of the defence staff at the time, has told the inquiry he had been unable to prepare British troops properly for war because the government did not want the plans to become public knowledge.Reith said he was concerned about the US "shock and awe" approach and warned General Tommy Franks, the US commander in Iraq, before the March 2003 invasion that "the more china that we broke, the more we would have to replace afterwards".Iraq war inquiryIraqGeoff HoonMilitaryRichard Norton-Taylorguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
data.gov Why have 2,500 sets of data been released online? news.bbc.co.uk |
DPP defends decision to prosecute mother in attempted murder case Keir Starmer says decision to prosecute Kay Gilderdale, cleared of trying to murder seriously ill daughter, was in public interestBritain's most senior prosecutor today defended his decision to prosecute a mother who was cleared of trying to murder her seriously ill daughter.Keir Starmer, QC, the director of public prosecutions, issued a statement in which he said putting the case of Kay Gilderdale before a jury had been in the public interest.Yesterday, after Gilderdale was found not guilty of attempting to murder her daughter, Lynn, the trial judge at Lewis crown court, Mr Justice Bean, took the rare step of criticising the Crown Prosecution Service for pursuing the case.Bean became the second criminal judge to question the necessity of the prosecution.Six months before the trial another judge pointed out that Gilderdale had already admitted aiding and abetting suicide, and invited the CPS to drop the attempted murder case.Gilderdale, 55, from Stonegate, East Sussex, was given a conditional discharge for assisted suicide, which she admitted.Lynn, 31, who was struck down with a severe form of ME and became bedridden at the age of 14, had expressed a wish to end her "unimaginably wretched" life.On 3 December 2008, after a failed attempt to take her life by injecting herself with morphine, she begged her mother for help.Bean said interim guidelines on mitigation factors in whether to prosecute a relative for assisted suicide, issued by the CPS last November, should have applied in the case.The guidelines contain a checklist of 13 factors against the prosecution for assisted suicide, concerning the wishes and motivation of both parties, the majority of which applied in Gilderdale's case.In his statement Starmer said he was satisfied that there was enough evidence against Gilderdale to provide "a realistic prospect of conviction" for attempted murder.He said he fully respected the jury's not guilty verdict, adding that he recognised Gilderdale was a "devoted mother who acted out of love and devotion for her daughter".He said: "But the fact remains that, where the CPS is satisfied that there is evidence to support a charge of attempted murder, the seriousness of that charge will very often mean that it is in the public interest to bring a case to court so that a jury can consider the evidence and return their verdict, as they did in this case."He said what had begun as assisted suicide, "namely passing morphine to her daughter", had progressed to attempted murder when Gilderdale went on to administer morphine and other drugs to induce an air embolism after Lynn had lost consciousness.Starmer added: "As the CPS assisted suicide interim policy makes clear, assisted suicide and attempted murder are very different offences."Assisted suicide involves assisting the victim to take his or her own life. Attempted murder is a step further than assisted suicide because it involves attempting to take the victim's life directly."LawCrimeAssisted suicideKaren McVeighguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Merton critical of festival head Comedian Paul Merton criticises a Bristol film festival director after he was left off this year's bill. news.bbc.co.uk |