Daughter recalls final visit to mother
Veronica Mansfield left her elderly mother on the night of June 6, 2016, knowing it would be the last time she would see her alive, the jury in an assisted suicide trial has been told.
Mansfield’s mother, Annemarie Treadwell, was 77 at the time of her death, in the Wellington suburb of Kilbirnie. She suffered from bad arthritis, and took medication for depression.
Susan Dale Austen, 67, a retired teacher from Lower Hutt, went on trial in the High Court at Wellington yesterday charged with aiding Treadwell’s suicide.
Mansfield told the court she did not remember being told the date her mother intended to die. But in a statement to police soon after the death she said she knew that, when she left Treadwell that night, it would be the last time she would see her. Treadwell had said winter was coming, and she was not going to do another winter.
Mansfield also said that, at the time of her death, Treadwell was writing her memoir, still drove her car, loved nature and animals, walked, and watched movies.
She told the court her mother had told her she had joined Exit, an assisted-dying organisation, but Mansfield – who was then a nurse – said she did not want to hear details. Treadwell’s interest was not just intellectual; it was something she wanted to do. ‘‘She wanted to choose when and how she would die, leave the world,’’ Mansfield said.
But her mother did not say how she was going to die.
Austen has pleaded not guilty to assisting Treadwell’s suicide, and to charges of importing the barbiturate pentobarbitone.
Her lawyer, Donald Stevens, QC, asked Mansfield if her mother saw her impending death as voluntary euthanasia or suicide. ‘‘Definitely euthanasia,’’ Mansfield said. She found a note in which Treadwell said no-one had coerced her or influenced her in any way.
Treadwell had made a submission in support of former MP Maryan Street’s petition to allow medically assisted dying.
Earlier, Justice Susan Thomas told the jury of seven women and five men that the case was not about their views on assisted dying, or the views of anyone else. Their job would be to focus on the evidence given in court, and apply the law as it would be explained to them.
Prosecutor Kate Feltham said the jury would hear evidence that Austen had imported pentobarbitone from Mexico, and later China, over several years.
Supporters of Austen gathered outside court before the trial began. They dressed mostly in red, as requested by Austen.
The trial is expected to last up to three weeks.