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Mercy killing is murder – first case before Court of Appeal

Saturday 13 November 2010 at 2:05 pm | In News | Post Comment

R v Inglis [2010] CA
The Court of Appeal, Criminal Division, in the first case of murder involving a mercy killing before it, heard that D injected her son with a fatal dose of heroin where he had suffered catastrophic brain damage after falling from an ambulance. There was no evidence that when the defendant injected the fatal dose of heroin into her son she had lost her self-control.

Held: The law of murder did not distinguish between murder committed for malevolent reasons and murder motivated by familial love. Subject to well established partial defences, like provocation or diminished responsibility, mercy killing was murder.

Guilty of murder:  The appeal against sentence was allowed to the extent that the minimum term of nine years was reduced to five years.

Per curiam: The court cannot decide the case on the basis of whichever of the contradictory strands of public opinion in this extremely sensitive area happens to coincide with our own views, assuming that is, that if we had allowed our personal feelings to impinge on our discussions, that there would be any coincidence of views. How the problems of mercy killing, euthanasia, and assisting suicide should be addressed must be decided by Parliament, which, for this purpose at any rate, should be reflective of the conscience of the nation. In this appeal we are constrained to apply the law as we find it to be. The court cannot amend it, or ignore it (see [39] of the judgment).