Retired policeman freed after admits killing ill wife

LONDON - A retired policeman who admitted killing his terminally ill wife by cutting her wrist as part of a failed suicide pact was freed by a British judge on Friday.

Brian Blackburn, 62, slashed his own wrist after making sure his wife Margaret, also 62, was dead, but he survived because the cut did not sever an artery.

Judge Richard Hawkins sentenced Blackburn, who admitted manslaughter, to nine months suspended for two years coupled with a supervision order.

"From late September 2004 she began to ask you to end her life as the last loving thing you could do for her. On the eve of the offence she was awake all night and in terrible pain.

"I accept that you were in a very loving relationship with her," the Old Bailey judge said.

The court heard Margaret Blackburn had stomach cancer and would have died within weeks of her death because of a three kg tumour in her stomach.

A former nurse, she had self-diagnosed the cancer and had refused treatment.

"My wife did not want to die slowly in hospital. I did what she asked me to do," Blackburn had told the court. "I failed myself and will now have to pay the price."

Blackburn said that as his wife's condition worsened, she kept asking him to do something.

"I told her I could not. She said it was the most loving thing I could do for her."

He said he had put his arms around her for 20 minutes as she died.

Margaret Blackburn's two grown-up sons from an earlier marriage said they understood why Brian Blackburn had taken their mother's life and that they fully supported what he had done.

Martin Lawrence accompanied by his elder brother Colin said outside court: "We are relieved that it is all over. Now we can get on with our lives. We are 110 per cent behind Mr Blackburn."

- REUTERS