The killing of a former Canberra scientist was "the ultimate violation of her human rights", but a judge has found it "would simply not be just" to lock up the daughter who poisoned her out of love and despair.
Huge sighs of relief echoed around a Goulburn courtroom on Thursday as Justice Robert Beech-Jones spared Barbara Eckersley a jail term and sentenced the 69-year-old to a two-year community corrections order.
A NSW Supreme Court jury last month cleared Eckersley of murdering her mother, Dr Mary White, but found her guilty of the 92-year-old's manslaughter.
The reasons behind that decision were not immediately clear, with two possible explanations, leaving it to Justice Beech-Jones to determine which was the case.
On Thursday, the judge said he was satisfied despite Eckersley's denials that she had intended to kill Dr White when she mixed pentobarbital into her mother's soup at a Bundanoon nursing home and fed it to the ailing woman.
He rejected Eckersley's claims she had merely tried to ease her mother's pain by administering the drug known as "green dream".
The drug is commonly used to sedate and euthanise animals, and the 69-year-old had acquired some of it decades ago while working as a wildlife carer in Canberra.
Justice Beech-Jones said Eckersley was an intelligent woman, but she did not take "a single step" to try to determine how much of the substance she could give Dr White without killing her.
He also said the evidence suggested Dr White had not been agitated or visibly distressed at the time in question, with Eckersley having described needing to "rouse" the victim in order to feed her the fatal meal in August 2018.
Justice Beech-Jones said while Eckersley had acted to end her mother's life, she had been suffering from a major depressive disorder as she watched Dr White's health deteriorate, reducing her criminal liability from murder to manslaughter.
Eckersley's lengthy trial heard she had regularly been in conflict with the doctors and staff at the Warrigal aged care home about the care of Dr White, who was partially paralysed and unable to communicate by the time of her death.
Justice Beech-Jones accepted both the prosecution's submissions that Eckersley had given Dr White the drug out of love, and the 69-year-old's claims that her behaviour was the product of despair at her ill mother's increasingly poor quality of life.
"It is hardly surprising that the jury refused to attach the label 'murderer' to Mrs Eckersley," he said.
But the judge warned advocates for euthanasia that this was not a case to cite in their arguments for legalisation, saying Dr White had been unable to communicate her wishes and her life had been ended involuntarily.
"It was the ultimate violation of her human rights for someone else to determine that her life should end," Justice Beech-Jones said.
"The law protects the vulnerable ... against even the well-intentioned decisions of others as to whether their life is worth living," he added.
Ultimately, however, the judge did not think it appropriate to jail Eckersley.
"To compound the sad end to Mary White's remarkable life by imprisoning a daughter who cared for her, and loved her, would simply not be just," he said.
The judge also said a "haunted" Eckersley "has punished, and continues to punish, herself", though he believed she had honestly "convinced herself" she had not intended to kill Dr White.
Justice Beech-Jones ordered Eckersley to undergo mental health treatment as a condition of her community corrections order.
Eckersley's solicitor, Adrian McKenna, said outside court it would be "quite the understatement" to describe the nearly three years since Dr White's death as "trying and incredibly tumultuous" for his client.
"She is completely relieved and very grateful to be walking out today and finally finishing this court process," Mr McKenna told a large media contingent.
"She is particularly grateful for the compassion, the justice and due process that were afforded to her by the jury and the judge in sentencing this morning."
Eckersley stood beside her ever-present husband Richard as Mr McKenna said she had struggled with the intense public scrutiny of her trial.
"She is quite frankly grateful to be now finally moving on with her life and looking on to other things," he said.
