Nine years for mother who ended son's 'hell'

A mother who gave her brain-damaged son a lethal heroin injection to end his "living hell" must serve at least nine years in jail.

Frances Inglis, 57, was given a life sentence for killing 22-year-old son Tom after he suffered severe head injuries when he fell out of a moving ambulance.

She gave a tearful and emotionally-charged account to jurors of how she had "no choice" and had done it "with love" to end his suffering.

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But a judge instructed them to put emotion aside and told them no one had the "unfettered right" to take the law into their own hands.

Inglis, of Dagenham, east London, was found guilty of both murder and attempted murder.

Last night Inglis's family said they were standing by her.

Son Alex, 26, said he wanted a review of the law for people in his mother's position who kill as an "act of mercy".

Inglis first tried to end her son's life in September 2007 and was charged with trying to kill him before going back and succeeding in November 2008.

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Judge Brian Barker, the Common Serjeant of London, told her: "We can all understand the emotion and the unhappiness that you were experiencing.

"The fact is that you knew that you intended to do a terrible thing. You knew you were breaking society's conventions, you knew you were breaking the law, and you knew the consequences.

"However we look at all this, this was a calculated and consistent course of criminal conduct."

She believed that her son would not recover following his accident, and the judge accepted her view was "sincerely held".

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"What you did was to take upon yourself what you thought your son's wishes would have been, to relieve him from what you described as a living hell.

"But you cannot take the law into your own hands and you cannot take away life, however compelling you think the reason."

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