It has emerged that a millionaire businessman, Douglas Laing, who last October wrote to a national newspaper ‘confessing’ that in 1998 ‘he “helped his wife die”’, has been jailed for a violent assault on his second wife; the former army medic and retired property developer, 71, is now under investigation by Devon and Cornwall police after telling the Sunday Times that ‘he gave his terminally ill wife Christine a fatal injection’.
Admitting ‘his long-held secret’, Laing said ‘he would “take whatever was coming”’, but in a shock revelation it was revealed that he had ‘recently been released from prison’ after serving three years for a brutal attack on his estranged second wife Susan, hitting her ‘around the head with a wooden mallet three times before calling police to their home near Exeter, Devon.’ Originally ‘arrested for attempted murder’, Laing, ‘a leading Tory councillor’ at Teignbridge District Council – who ‘showed “no emotion”’ during the attack in 2017 after drinking Tia Maria and Polish brandy’ – instead ‘admitted wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm’ (‘Millionaire who killed first wife by injection attacked his second wife with mallet’, Daily Express, January 24, 2022).
Just a few days ago the Crown Prosecution Service announced it is considering changing the rules for prosecutors in cases of apparent ‘mercy killings’; Director of Public Prosecutions Max Hill said that the changes could mean “‘loving”’ partners would be less likely to face prosecution. Current advice states that where sufficient evidence is available ‘“a prosecution is almost certainly required, even in cases such as the ‘mercy killing’ of a sick relative”’, but new proposals in the draft guidance state that ‘“it has never been the rule that a prosecution will automatically follow”’ – even where sufficient evidence is available to bring charges.
Under the new guidance, ‘prosecutions would be less likely in cases of suicide pacts or mercy killings’ where evidence existed that ‘the victim had made an informed and voluntary decision to die and were too unwell to commit the act themselves’, while cases ‘where the suspect was motivated only by compassion, where they tried to take their own life at the same time, and where they fully co-operated with the police, would also be less likely to result in prosecution.’
The DPP said that ‘“under the new guidance”’, while ‘“a prosecution may be required”’ there were ‘“circumstances where actually, even where you have the evidence, you may be able to move away from prosecution – for example, where there is evidence of a settled intention on the part of the victim that their life should come to an end, and that what happens is at the time of their choosing.”’ He maintained that while “‘in some cases charges will be brought … in others we will be able to avoid placing a loving husband or a loving wife in court to face criminal charges”’.
However, he did not explain how all these crucial details could be known when the chief witness – possibly for the prosecution – was dead; tellingly, while chief executive of Care Not Killing, Dr Gordon Macdonald, warned of the consequences of effectively changing the law at ‘“a time when elder abuse, and other crimes against vulnerable people are on the rise”’, the announcement was hailed by the campaign Dignity in Dying.
Dignity in Dying was formerly known as the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, although ‘euthanasia’ implies an involuntary death, and there was no acknowledgement that effectively legalising the killing of sick patients would be all too convenient for a health service under such pressure that measures are being taken to ‘evict’ NHS ‘bed-blockers’ to make more space.
Significantly, Parliament has in the past roundly rejected Bills for assisted suicide, most recently in 2015, after studying the immense scope for abuse.
Devon and Cornwall police are now ‘looking into’ Laing’s ‘actions from the past after he detailed how he injected his wife Christine with a lethal combination of drugs’, saying in his letter to the Sunday Times that ‘she told him she was “ready to die” after her terminal ovarian cancer became too much to bear.’ He maintained that ‘“[t]aking the brave decision she did allowed my wife to say goodbye to our two sons while she was able to, and allowed us a final cuddle. I know the consequences and it doesn’t bother me one jot”’, stating: ‘“I have struggled with what I did and only recently spoken to close family about it. I wanted to make my actions public knowledge in support of the move to legalise assisted dying.”’
It is interesting that Laing thought he could promote ‘the right to die’ by revealing his earlier crime, but thankfully the second Mrs Laing lived to tell the tale. However, the first Mrs Laing did not, and this is the monumental risk that our prosecution service is taking with public safety: the main witness is dead and we have only the word of the killer to go on.
The ‘right to die’ campaign is really the campaign to legalise killing rather than care, but campaigners everywhere insist that their proposed legal changes would only apply to helping a terminally ill person end their life; however, Mrs Laing’s death was euthanasia, not assisted suicide, and while doctors’ prognoses are often wrong, making it legal to kill a sick person will ensure that whatever they are suffering from, and whatever their prognosis, their illness will indeed be terminal.
But if any good can come out of this tragedy it will be that the Sunday Times’ misguided attempt to promote ‘dignity in death’, in inadvertently highlighting the narrow escape of the second Mrs Laing – who was, mercifully, not killed – will help to kill off the deeply dangerous idea that there should be a right to be killed.