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Suspended sentence for mercy killing

London: A former SAS (British special forces) soldier who suffocated his terminally ill son suffering from Hunter syndrome, a rare genetic disorder, with a pillow was cleared of murder and allowed to walk free from court on Monday. At the end of a protracted case exploring the question of mercy killing, Andrew Wragg was given a suspended sentence for manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility after the judge accepted his wife had been ``complicit'' in the death. The retrial exposed the strains between Wragg (38), who had worked as a security guard in Iraq, and his wife Mary (42). Wragg pleaded that the pressure of looking after Jacob, his failing marriage and the horrors he witnessed in Iraq led him to believed his son had ``come to the end of the road''. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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