Woman spared jail-time despite euthanasia manslaughter conviction
LONDON: A woman who was found guilty of manslaughter after she fed her mother a fatal dose of veterinary drugs will not spend any time in jail, instead serving a two-year community corrections order.
Barbara Eckersley’s mother, acclaimed scientist Mary White, died in 2018 in her New South Wales southern highlands nursing home.
Her daughter was charged with murder after she admitted adding the so-called “green dream” drug to her mother’s soup.
The drugs, called barbiturates, are commonly used by veterinarians to euthanase animals. Eckersley had the drugs leftover from when she was a wildlife carer in Canberra more than two decades earlier.
Last month a jury found Eckersley guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter.
Dr White, was an acclaimed palaeobotanist and Eureka prize winner. In 2009 she was named a Member of the Order of Australia.
But in her later years, she was beset by a series of minor strokes and dementia.
Eckersley told the court her mother knew what was happening to her.
“She was very aware she was losing her mind,” Eckersley said.
“For a person who’s mind was so much of who she was it distressed her enormously.”
Dr White was admitted to the nursing home in 2016, after one of her strokes left her unable to speak or move more than her arms.
She died as preparations were being made to move her to a home in Coffs Harbour, near another of her daughters.
Eckersley described the moment to the court when she decided to use the drugs on her mother.
Throughout her trial, Eckersley denied she was trying to kill her mother, saying she only wanted to ease her suffering.
Eckersley told the court she remembered sitting on her bed, lost in an out of body experience, vacantly staring out the window.
Eckersley said she then had a vision of the drugs sitting in a bag above her wardrobe at home.
“I just thought it was something I could slightly sedate her with,” she told the court.
Today in sentencing, Justice Robert Beech-Jones found Eckersley did intend to kill her mother when she gave her the drugs, but that her moral culpability was low because of her severe depression.
“While I’m satisfied Mrs Eckersley intended to kill her mother, that intention was formed only just prior to her committing the act,” Justice Beech-Jones said in sentencing.
“The killing occurred in a context where her facilities were substantially impaired and was both done for love and as a result of despair.
He sentenced Eckersley to a two-year community corrections order and mandating that she undergo mental health treatment.
During the trial two different versions of Barbara Eckersley were presented to the court.
Prosecutor Paul Kerr told the jury that Eckerlsey had only confessed to police when she knew there would be a post mortem, and she would be caught.
Mr Kerr told the jury Eckersley was hard to please and at odds with the nursing home staff over the care of her mother.
He said Eckersley was not a bad person, but good people did bad things, and she had intentionally killed her mother.
The court also heard how earlier on the day Dr White died, her daughter had also given her crushed Temazepam tablets.
But Eckersley’s lawyers painted another picture of a caring daughter in despair over her mother’s suffering.
They said she had just wanted her mother to be comfortable and not to kill her.
The court heard Eckersley had spent the day before her mother’s death altering new nighties and sewing on name tags and fixing her mother’s wall hangings, in preparation for Dr White being moved to another aged care home.
Outside court after today’s sentencing Eckersley’s lawyer Adrian McKenna said the trial had been a “long journey” for his client.
“She is completely relieved and very grateful and walking out today and finishing the court process.”
