- guardian.co.uk, Monday 25 January 2010 16.59 GMT
Kay Gilderdale and her daughter Lynn. Photograph: PA
A mother who helped her daughter end her own life by handing her morphine and administering other drugs has been cleared of attempted murder.
Bridget Kathleen Gilderdale, 55, known as Kay, was found not guilty by jurors at Lewes crown court. The judge said the verdict showed "common sense, decency and humanity" but it is certain to spark a new debate about assisted dying.
Lynn, Kay's 31-year-old daughter, had injected herself with two syringes containing large doses of pain-relieving medicine in an attempt to take her own life following a 17-year battle with illness.
When the drugs were not enough to kill her, her mother searched the house for more tablets, which she crushed with a pestle and mortar and gave her daughter through a feeding tube in her nose.
In the hours that followed, Gilderdale gave her daughter three syringes of air through an intravenous catheter with the intention of causing fatal air bubbles in her bloodstream.
Lynn died later that morning, 4 December 2008, at the family bungalow in Stonegate, near Heathfield, East Sussex.
A postmortem examination found she died from morphine toxicity.
Gilderdale admitted assisting suicide and was given a a 12-month conditional discharge. She denied attempted murder.
The judge, Mr Justice Bean, said: "I do not normally comment on the verdicts of juries but in this case their decision, if I may say so, shows that common sense, decency and humanity which makes jury trials so important in a case of this kind.
"There is no dispute that you were a caring and loving mother and that you considered that you were acting in the best interests of your daughter."
Gilderdale's son Steve, flanked by his mother and father, read a statement outside court. "This not guilty verdict properly reflects the selfless actions my mother took on finding that Lynn had decided to take her own life, to make her daughter's final moments as peaceful and painless as possible.
"These actions exhibit the same qualities of dedication, love and care that mum demonstrated throughout the 17 years of Lynn's illness.
"I'm very proud of her and I hope she will be afforded the peace that she deserves to rebuild her life and finally grieve for the death of her daughter."
Detective Superintendent Andy Griffiths, of Sussex police's major crime squad, said: "The moral issues surrounding the tragic circumstances of Lynn's death are not for us to comment on. Sussex police has a duty to uphold the law and investigate offences reported to us.
"There is no sense of success or failure in this case, but we are satisfied that our role in the justice process has been fulfilled."
The case has drawn parallels with that of Frances Inglis, the mother jailed at the Old Bailey last week for injecting her brain-damaged son with a lethal dose of heroin.
Bean asked prosecutor Sally Howes QC "why it was considered to be in the public interest" to pursue Gilderdale on the attempted murder charge when she had admitted aiding and abetting her daughter's suicide.
Howes said the prosecution decided at "the highest level" to press on with a jury trial after Gilderdale had told her GP and the police that she had administered an air embolism with the intent to end her daughter's life.
John Price QC, for the defence, asked the judge to consider an absolute discharge based on interim guidelines by the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC. Starmer last year outlined 16 "public interest factors" in favour of a prosecution and 13 factors against taking legal action to bring clarity to existing assisted suicide legislation after law lords backed Debbie Purdy's call for clarification on whether people who help someone take their life would be prosecuted.
Price said that if the DPP had handled the case in light of the law lords verdict it would not have been considered in the public interest to prosecute.
The case has sparked calls for a review of assisted suicide law by Dignity in Dying, an organisation that says it campaigns to alleviate unnecessary suffering at the end of life.
Sarah Wootton, the chief executive of Dignity in Dying, said: "There is a clear ethical difference between assisted dying, assisted suicide, euthanasia and murder, yet the law makes little distinction between these acts."
The court had heard that until the age of 14 Lynn was a bright and healthy schoolgirl. But after a BCG vaccination at school she was struck down with ME and within four months was unable to move from the waist down.
As the illness progressed she became bedridden, lost her ability to swallow or speak and was fed through a tube. She required round-the-clock care from her mother and carers.
The court was told Lynn suffered from an "unimaginably wretched" life through illness and had expressed a clear desire to end her own life.
She had also drafted a "living will", placed a "do not resuscitate" note on her medical records and considered ending her life at Dignitas, the Swiss-based assisted suicide clinic.
Communication with her parents, who were divorced but remained supportive of her, was through a form of sign language they devised themselves.
She was bed-bound, socially isolated, unable to sit up and developed suicidal thoughts, which she had aired on a web forum for people with debilitating illnesses.
