A little after daybreak, a police van carrying an elderly Briton pulled out of the high-walled, colonial-era complex that is Nicosia’s central prison.
As on so many other occasions, it was the start of a journey David Hunter knew well: a near 100-mile road trip that would take the septuagenarian to the only other building he has been permitted to visit over the past 19 months – the district court in the coastal town of Paphos.
Except this journey was different. After countless adjournments, endless legal wrangling, tears and high drama, Hunter was finally to be sentenced in a trial more closely watched than any other in Cyprus in recent years.
For the former miner it marked the end of an ordeal that began in December 2021, days after Janice, his wife of 52 years, died at his hands after beseeching him “for weeks” to relieve her of the excruciating pain brought on by advanced blood cancer.
Not a day has passed, says Hunter, when he has not replayed the events of that fated night; events that would lead him to finally submit to Janice’s demand, using his hands to block the 74-year-old’s airways before she took her last breath in a white leather armchair in the couple’s villa outside Paphos.
Later that night – after telling his brother William in the UK who would alert the police – the Northumberland-born Briton would attempt to kill himself with an overdose.
This month, as the eastern Mediterranean island sweltered in record-breaking temperatures, the court’s three-member panel of judges announced it had found Hunter, 76, guilty of manslaughter but not premeditated murder – the charge he had faced, which carries an automatic life sentence.
His lawyers reacted with barely concealed delight. “This gives the court the option of a suspended sentence which we say is appropriate given the time David has already spent in custody, his age and the tragic facts of this case,” said the British barrister Michael Polak, whose legal aid group, Justice Abroad, has coordinated Hunter’s defence.
“Janice and David were in a loving relationship for over 50 years and it is clear that David did what he did out of love for Janice upon her request. We strongly believe that no proper purpose would be served by David spending any further time in prison.”
The defence team, he said, would submit extensive case law “from across the common law world”, citing sentencing in similar cases. Four days after the oral and written submissions were made, the presiding judge, Michalis Droussiotis, announced the court’s decision: Hunter was sentenced to two years but could walk free because of time already served.
“Before us is a unique case of taking human life on the basis of feelings of love,” said the Cypriot judge, emphasising that ending any life remained a crime. “[In this case it was committed] with the aim of relieving the person of their suffering as a result of illness.”
In a society that is…
2023-07-31 10:06:31
Source from www.theguardian.com