Kay Gilderdale trial defended
Updated on 26 January 2010
The most senior prosecutor in England and Wales has defended the decision to bring charges against Kay Gilderdale, the mother cleared of trying to kill her seriously ill daughter.
Keir Starmer said the prosecution was in the public interest and he was satisfied there was enough evidence against her to provide a realistic prospect of conviction for attempted murder.
Mrs Gilderdale from Stonegate in East Sussex admitted assisting her daughter Lynn's suicide but yesterday was cleared of attempted murder by a jury at Lewes Crown Court.
Two judges questioned whether she should have faced trial for her role in her daughter's death who was paralysed from the waist down by ME and led an "unimaginably wretched" life.
It has been reported that in a pre-trial hearing Judge Richard Brown suggested that prosecutors should accept her guilty plea to assisted suicide and drop the attempted murder charge.
The reports suggest he said: "Wouldn't it be better to accept it now rather than let this defendant get tangled up in a messy trial for the sake of some legal mumbo-jumbo?"
The trial judge Mr Justice Bean yesterday asked prosecutor Sally Howes QC to explain "why it was considered to be in the public interest" to pursue Mrs Gilderdale on the attempted murder charge.
She said that the case was decided at the "highest level".
In a statement issued today the Director of Public Prosecutions Mr Starmer said: "In the case of Mrs Gilderdale, the Crown Prosecution Service was satisfied that there was sufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction for attempted murder on the basis that Mrs Gilderdale’s conduct, which began as assisted suicide, namely passing morphine to her daughter so that her daughter could commit suicide, progressed to attempted murder when Mrs Gilderdale herself went on to administer morphine and other drugs and to introduce an air embolism to her daughter after her daughter had lost consciousness."
The Gilderdale verdict is in marked contrast to the jailing of another mother last week for killing her brain-damaged son.
Frances Inglis from Dagenham, East London was given a life sentence and jailed for nine years for injecting her son with a lethal dose of heroin. 22 year old Tom had suffered severe head injuries when he fell out of a moving ambulance. Mrs Inglis said she had no choice and had done it with love to end his suffering.
Speaking today another son Alex Inglis gave his reaction to the Gilderdale verdict.
He said: "It does inspire us but it's really surprising the difference. The cases are very similar apart from Gilderdale's daughter said that she wanted to die where as Tom was so extreme he couldn't communicate that".
Alex Inglis accepted there had been some difference of opinion amongst doctors about Tom's chances of recovery.
He added: "There was one doctor who was saying look from the position of how Tom's brain was, he could be running his own business in a year or something like that. But every other doctor we spoke to said Tom would be severely disabled for the rest of his life. Basically he would never leave hospital."
He said his mother would be appealing her sentence and said she was coping well in prison.
He said: "She's spending a lot of time learning different things, learning to play the piano. She's got a lot of support in prison."
But he admitted Mrs Inglis hadn't expected such a long prison sentence.
"She's very, very upset about the length of the sentence. I think she was kind of shocked at how long it is. But she did see it as a possibility."
