Daughter of Jane Aiken Hodge speaks of legal ordeal after novelist's suicide

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Miranda Bryant12 April 2012

The daughter of novelist Jane Aiken Hodge has spoken out for the first time since being cleared of helping her mother to die and called for a relaxation of the laws on assisted suicide.

Professor Joanna Hodge said the Crown Prosecution Service's decision not to take her and her sister, Jessica Hodge, to court was a "big relief", but said the phrasing of the Human Rights Act needed to be changed.

Speaking for the first time since being cleared, she also called for Frances Inglis — the mother who was jailed for nine years last month after injecting her brain-damaged son with a lethal heroin dose — to be freed.

Professor Hodge, 56, said her 91-year-old mother would have been "horrified" if she had known of the six-month ordeal her daughters would have to face after she took a fatal overdose of pills that took four days to kill her.

The author of romance novels, from Lewes, East Sussex, carried a "living will" asking for her not to be resuscitated. She was unconscious but alive for four days while four members of her family were with her.

Professor Hodge, who teaches philosophy at Manchester Metropolitan University, was present when she died.

She told the Standard: "In my mum's case she was clear as a bell. There's a huge problem with how the Human Rights Act is phrased. My mum had a living will that she had, we had and the neighbours had.

"We didn't call the emergency services because we had to do what she wanted. Needless to say, I'm glad Michael Jennings [a reviewing lawyer for the CPS] came to the decision he came to."

She added: "Personally it felt very difficult. It was my impulsive mama what done it. She gave us six months of waiting for the law to decide. She had thought of everything — she cancelled the milk, she left us letters, but she forgot to cancel the newspapers."

She said her mother had been planning her death for over 15 years, adding: "My mum had all this exit literature — she'd been talking about it for years. But I was astonished by her decision to die. I had no idea she was going to do it — I was absolutely stunned."

Speaking about Mrs Inglis, Professor Hodge said: "My impulse now is don't we need to think about compassion in the case? I can't bear the thought of her being in a cell. The case should be re-opened and I hope she gets off."

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