Lesley Martin plotted in book to find a way out, court told

By JAMES GARDINER

Euthanasia advocate Lesley Martin wove a plot in her book to get away with attempting to murder her mother, the Crown told the High Court at Wanganui yesterday.

In his closing address to the jury, prosecutor Andrew Cameron said the Crown had changed its position on the morphine Martin administered to her dying mother, Joy - a move the defence labelled outrageous.

Martin, 40, is on trial after denying two counts of attempted murder in 1999, charges that were laid only after she published a book two years ago about events surrounding her mother's death.

The book says she made a promise not to let her mother "lie there, not alive and not dead" and quotes Joy Martin saying: "be quick" and "don't get caught".

Closing arguments after two weeks of evidence saw the Crown arguing the book was true apart from one "critical invention" by Martin, while her lawyer, Dr Donald Stevens, QC, said the book was wrong in many places and could not be relied on because Martin's memory was distorted.

"Why write the book in which you admit all these things unless you create a way out?" Mr Cameron asked the jury. "You might think that was sheer lunacy."

He said toxicology evidence had shown that rather than giving her mother 30mg of morphine two nights before her death, as the book claimed and the Crown had contested when opening the case, that dose was actually given shortly before Joy Martin died.

"It's complicated, isn't it," he said. "When someone weaves a plot it does become complicated."

He said Martin "wanted to get away with it. So when she writes the book she creates a platform for an out ... She didn't want to be convicted".

That led to Dr Donald Stevens accusing Mr Cameron of distorting and contorting the evidence, which was "nothing short of outrageous" and trying to mislead the jury.

He said the Crown's case on the first attempted murder count - that Martin administered a 60mg dose of morphine the night before her mother died - collapsed when two of its expert witnesses said such a dose would almost certainly have killed her at the time.

The only evidence that Martin had tried to suffocate her mother with a pillow just before she died was based on what she had written, which was unreliable.

The autopsy found no evidence of suffocation but that Joy Martin died of respiratory arrest caused either by morphine administration or broncho-pneumonia.

Mr Cameron said as well as what she had written, Martin had admitted administering the 60mg morphine dose to hospice nurse Wiki Alward and to Detective Sergeant Ross Grantham, who spoke to her after her mother's death and again after the book was published.

He said her admission in the second interview with Mr Grantham, that the book was true, including the parts about the morphine and the pillow, amounted to "a comprehensive confession".

It was supported by what she said to her sister and one of her mother's friends in 1999.

Whether she was stressed or depressed, the intent to kill was still there.

"She cannot have it both ways," he said.

"She cannot campaign for euthanasia as the personal face of the euthanasia debate ... then in court deny she is that personal face because she did not form the intent to carry out the act which she has described."

Dr Stevens said the jury should end Martin's suffering by rapidly returning not guilty verdicts.

Justice John Wild will today sum up the case, which is in its third week.