Spared jail, husband who slit his cancer-stricken wife’s throat in failed suicide pact
A ‘DEVOTED’ husband who killed his cancer-stricken wife walked free from court yesterday after being cleared of her murder.
Graham Mansfield, 73, cut the throat of his terminally-ill wife, Dyanne, 71, after she begged him to end her suffering when her lung cancer became too much to bear.
Leaving Manchester Crown Court yesterday, he immediately backed calls for a change to the law on assisted dying.
He told the court that the couple made a ‘suicide pact’ to die together because – after more than 40 years of marriage – they couldn’t contemplate being apart.
But when the retired baggage handler botched the attempt to end his own life and dialled 999 for help, he was arrested and prosecutors charged him with murder.
Yesterday a jury accepted his explanation that the couple, who had no children, had made a pact to die together and found him not guilty following a four-day trial. Instead he was
‘An act of love and compassion’
convicted of manslaughter. However, High Court Judge Mr Justice Goose spared Mansfield prison by handing him a two-year suspended sentence.
He told the pensioner: ‘ Every sinew of your being did not want to kill your wife but this was an act of love and compassion.
‘You were under intense emotional pressure to relieve her of her suffering. You acted out of love for your wife and you did it because she could not do it herself.’
Following the case, Mansfield’s legal team said it was ‘disgusting’ the pensioner had been charged in the first place.
They stressed that, under draft guidance issued to prosecutors following a recent consultation on so- called ‘ mercy’ killings, he should not have been prosecuted. Speaking outside the court yesterday, Mansfield said that, despite his ordeal, he had no regrets and would do the same again.
‘The law needs to change,’ he said. ‘ Nobody should have to go through what we went through.
‘Today, my wife’s not there. She shouldn’t have had to die in such barbaric circumstances. That’s what we had to resort to. As soon as we can get some sort of euthanasia in this country, with terminal illness a priority, the better.’
He added that his wife ‘would be fuming’ that he had got a criminal conviction for helping her.
Mansfield’s barrister Richard Orme said the case ‘ticked all the boxes’ of a mercy killing and added: ‘One has to ask why on earth have they [the Crown Prosecution Service] prosecuted Graham Mansfield.’
‘We’re very happy that the jury acquitted Mr Mansfield of murder but, under the current system, he had no defence to manslaughter. This is a shocking state of affairs in what’s supposed to be a civilised country.’
And his solicitor Rachel Fletcher, of law firm Slater Heelis, said the couple – who married in Las Vegas in 1980 – were unable to consider Dignitas, the Swiss assisted dying clinic, due to Covid travel restrictions at the time and the rapid decline of Mrs Mansfield’s health. The court heard Mrs Mansfield suffered a six-inch wound to her neck and bled to death after her husband cut her throat in the back garden of their £ 500,000 home in an upmarket village of Hale, in Cheshire, in March last year.
He attempted to cut his own wrists and throat, and later swallowed tablets, but woke up in a pool of blood on their kitchen floor and dialled 999 the following morning after becoming fearful that his sister would visit and find the ‘extraordinary scene’.
Although the couple’s friends, family and neighbours were all
interviewed by police and spoke of Mansfield’s ‘unswerving devotion’ to his wife, suspicions were raised about the ‘brutal’ nature of Mrs Mansfield’s death and about large cash withdrawals he made from the couple’s bank account in the weeks before.
Two notes detailing the couple’s pact were also both written by Mansfield and there was ‘no record whatsoever of Dyanne Mansfield’s wishes’, the court heard.
Nurses who made regular visits to treat Mrs Mansfield, a former import/export clerk, also claimed she had not reached ‘the point of her last days’.
Mansfield told the jury he had withdrawn the cash so relatives had money for the couple’s funerals. He said he researched methods of killing his wife but settled on slicing her throat. Mrs Mansfield had difficulty swallowing so the couple did not consider an overdose, while other techniques were deemed ‘inappropriate’, the court heard.
The court heard Mansfield had cancelled their milk and newspaper delivery, paid off the window cleaner and even filled the bird feeder in the couple’s garden.
In a victim impact statement, Mrs Mansfield’s older brother, Peter Higson, 76, said he held ‘no malice’ towards his brother-in-law and that they were still friends.
Martin Goldman, Chief Crown Prosecutor for CPS North West, said prosecutors had carefully weighed the evidence and determined that a prosecution ‘was in the public interest’.
He added: ‘Mansfield failed to convince the jury that this had been a lawful killing.’
‘Ticked the boxes of a mercy killing’