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A pensioner who strangled and suffocated her terminally ill boyfriend with a Spurs football club bag walked free from the Old Bailey today.
Joyce Evans, 69, had claimed that Colin Ballinger, who had only months to live, had asked her to help him die, the court was told. But hours earlier he had told neighbours: “I’m good, I feel lucky, my legs are working.”
Evans was cleared of murder by the jury but convicted of manslaughter last month. Today Judge Gerald Gordon imposed a 12-month sentence suspended for two years.
Evans, who suffers from arthritis and long-term depression, has served the equivalent of a 19-month sentence since her arrest last August.
Mr Ballinger, 66, who had terminal cirrhosis of the liver from heavy drinking, lived with Evans in Upper Holloway. She told detectives she had put the plastic bag over his head before changing her mind and stopping.
The judge said he recognised she had provided “constant and arduous care” to Mr Ballinger before turning on him.
“Your recognised medical condition played a substantial role in what happened,” he said. “The taking of a life of another person is always regarded as a grave and serious matter whatever the circumstances and however little of that life in reality remained.
“There is in this case clear similarities in mercy killings.”