Frances Inglis Launches Appeal

A “devoted” mother given a life sentence for murdering her severely disabled son with a shot of heroin launched her appeal in the high court today.

Frances Inglis, 58, from Dagenham, east London, killed her 22-year-old son Tom in 2008 after he was left in a vegetative state following an accident when he fell out of a moving ambulance.

Though she has never denied deliberately giving him a fatal overdose in his hospital bed – and attempting to do the same on an earlier occasion – she is appealing against both her conviction and sentence, which saw her sent to jail for a minimum of nine years.

She decided to end Tom’s life “calmly and peacefully” because she believed he was in “constant pain” after his accident in July 2007, her barrister told three court of appeal judges in London. She was horrified to learn that the only legal way to let him die was to apply to the high court for an order to withhold food and nutrition, which would result in a “slow and painful death”.

If Inglis’s conviction is overturned, it could prompt a rethink in the laws around assisted dying and so-called mercy killing.

The importance of the case is underlined by the presence on the panel of the lord chief justice, head of the judiciary of England and Wales, who said the case “raises issues of deep moral, ethical concern”.

But he stressed: “There is no law of mercy killing. It is not a defence, it is not an offence.”

At the high court today, her counsel, Alan Newman QC, said Inglis was “a devoted mother, a perfect lady, a person of impeccable character” who had worked for many years helping children and adults with disabilities.

She fell apart following her middle son’s accident, said Newman. “She was entirely taken up with the belief that Tom was suffering and that he was trapped in a sort of living hell and in pain,” he said. “She was no longer the person her family, friends and colleagues had once known.”

Inglis, who was present in the dock of the high court and watched by her husband and two remaining sons, was ordered to serve a minimum term of nine years in January after being found guilty of murder and attempted murder by a jury at the Old Bailey.

Her case prompted public outcry and was widely compared to that of another mother, Kay Gilderdale, who helped her 31-year-old daughter to kill herself. Just a week after Inglis was sent to jail, Gilderdale walked free from court with a 12-month conditional discharge.

Newman showed the judges a bundle of letters written to Inglis from “complete strangers” expressing their concern at her case. But the lord chief justice refused to let him read them to the court, saying that there could be just as many letters from intelligent people holding “a completely different view”.

Inglis’s lawyers argue that the trial judge was wrong not to let the jury decide whether her defence of provocation was valid.

One of the areas of provocation related to the signs of “pain and terror that she believed from start to finish that Tom was suffering”. Newman said Inglis was repeatedly “provoked” by the awful sight of her son’s pain. He compared her feelings to those of a “battered wife” who is driven to commit terrible acts after being subjected to repeated abuse.

Tom Inglis suffered severe head injuries when he fell out of a moving ambulance in July 2007. He had been trying to get out of the vehicle because he did not want to be taken to hospital after being involved in a minor pub fight.

His mother first tried to end his life two months after the accident when he was being treated at Queen’s hospital in Romford, Essex.

His heart stopped for six minutes but he was revived.

The mother-of-three was charged with attempted murder before successfully trying again in November 2008, after barricading herself in her son’s room at the Gardens nursing home in Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire, and supergluing the door.

Inglis gave an emotionally charged account to jurors of how she had “no choice” but to end his life and had done it “with love”.

But Judge Brian Barker, the common serjeant of London, directed the jury that no one had the “unfettered right” to take the law into their own hands.

Jurors returned a majority verdict of 10-2 and the judge told them: “You could not have had a more difficult case.”

Though the crown opposes Inglis’s appeal, Miranda Moore QC, said: “We from the prosecution all agree that this was a truly sad case no matter which way you look at it.”