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Michael Oliver represents mother who killed her 5-year-old child

‘AM' was discharged from hospital too soon when doctors could not agree on her precise mental illness. She was always regarded as a very good mother until the fateful night.

When the civil inquiry was set up in Manchester Michael Oliver represented her through its 30 days of hearings spread over a 15-month period. His submissions were broadly accepted by the inquiry. He also represented her when she agreed to appeal to the Court of Appeal against the mandatory life sentence she received after pleading guilty to murder. A manslaughter verdict was substituted. Mercifully she never had to enter the prison system and had been diverted to a secure mental hospital after leaving the police station after the original incident.

Michael says, "It was the most tragic situation possible to imagine, since everyone agrees that never before the night had she so much as lifted a finger to harm her child; rather she was over-protective. She felt so bad about what she had done that she insisted on punishing herself by not accepting the offer of a plea to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility which was open to her from the very beginning. She would not for some years allow us to appeal to the Court of Appeal. She co-operated with the inquiry because she wanted to find out what was wrong with her. I do a lot of mental health work, sitting on the tribunal: her symptoms were very confusing and I would not have envied the psychiatrists their task at any stage, yet she was a highly co-operative patient and impressively never in denial, just confused. She was genuinely surprised, and I like to think very heartened, to find that she was not criticised in the report but rather shown deep sympathy. The tragedy is that no-one thought for one moment that her partner would not be there on the night. When I visited her recently she was trying as well as she could to get on with her life, developing some practical computing and desk publishing skills and looking to the future. She has my very best wishes, and I am sure those of everyone else at the inquiry."

Media Reports

• Sky News, 13Jan2010
• BBC News, 17Jan2004

15 January 2010

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