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Frances Inglis, left, said she killed her son Thomas to end his suffering
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It is natural but futile to examine the face of Frances Inglis for signs of the torment that led her to give her severely disabled son a fatal injection of heroin. Her blank, straightforward gaze and compressed lips tell us nothing. They are the features of a resigned, slightly careworn 57-year-old woman who has been asked to pose for an official photograph, knowing the camera will not be kind.
Frances Inglis为严重瘫痪的儿子注射过量海洛因致其死亡。出于常情，人们想从她的脸上看到痛苦，但却失败了。她空洞、率直的凝视和紧闭的双唇让人们无功而返。尽管知道摄像机对自己并不友善，这位略显憔悴的57岁女性还是顺从地接受了记者的拍照要求。
And yet this is the face of a convicted murderer. She twice tried to put her 22-year-old son, Tom, beyond suffering. Her first attempt to kill him failed. On bail for his attempted murder and banned from seeing him, she entered his nursing home in Hertfordshire by posing as his aunt.
这，就是已被定罪为杀人凶手的面孔。她曾两次试图让自己22岁的儿子汤姆“彻底解脱”。然而，第一次尝试却以失败告终。杀人未遂获保释后，被禁止探视儿子的她又冒充汤姆的姑妈进入了位于英格兰东南部的赫特福德郡的私人疗养院。
Armed with a stolen syringe and ￡200 worth of heroin, she barricaded herself in his room with an oxygen cylinder and a wheelchair and poured strong glue into the lock to buy herself time.
带着偷来的注射器和价值200美元的海洛因，她用氧气瓶、轮椅堵住病房门，还在门锁处涂上强力胶为自己争取更多时间。
"I took the syringe and injected him and held him and told him everything would be fine," she softly told an Old Bailey jury. She gave the lethal injection "with love in her heart" and from a conviction that he was being tortured by constant pain. She believed she was performing an "act of mercy", but she also admitted knowing that what she did was against the law.
“我拿起针管为他注射，抱着他，告诉他这一切都将过去。”在位于英国伦敦老贝利街的中央刑事法庭上，她向陪审团缓缓道出整个过程。“心中怀着对儿子的爱”，由于不忍儿子不断遭受病痛的折磨，她选择用致命性注射来终结爱子的生命。虽坚信此举"出于仁慈"，她也承认知道自己的所作所为触犯了法律。
The wave of public revulsion at Frances Inglis`s life sentence, of which she must serve at least nine years, reflects an instinctive understanding of the fierceness of that bond. She believed the alternative was crueller: watching him die slowly of hunger and thirst as his life-support mechanism was switched off - assuming that this had been allowed by the high court.
Frances Inglis最终被判无期徒刑，至少入狱9年。公众对此的强烈反感反映了人们对母子情深的本能理解。她之所以这样做是因为坚信其他抉择更加残忍：因为所有维持生命的机制都被切断，她只能眼睁睁地看着他慢慢死于饥渴--她假定这些都获得了高等法院的允许。
But there are troubling elements to this tragedy that puts it in a different category from assisted suicide. Tom did not have a terminal illness.
然而，却有一些麻烦的因素证明这起悲剧并非协助性自杀--汤姆所患并非不治之症。
It was his mother, desperate and at times hysterical with grief, who interpreted his state and believed she was acting in his best interests.
是他那因悲痛而绝望、时常歇斯底里的母亲自己解读他的状态，相信自己所做的一切都是为了他好。
When Mrs Inglis, who was doing a nursing diploma, was assured that her brain-damaged son was not in pain, she asked: "How do they know?" She is alleged to have refused to believe an encouraging prognosis from one of the doctors at Queen`s Hospital, Romford, and to have seen only "horror, pain and tragedy" in his condition.
当Inglis夫人（当时正在学护理学）被告知脑损伤的儿子没有病痛时，她反问：“他们怎么知道？”据称，她不相信英国罗姆福Queen's Hospital一名医生对汤姆病状的乐观预断，称自己所看到的只有儿子的“恐惧、痛苦与不幸”。
Equally, we might ask, how did she know? Was there absolutely no hope for his recovery? By what extension of a mother`s intuition could she measure her comatose son`s "living hell"? Yet so certain was she of his agony that only 10 days after Tom was injured by falling from an ambulance, in 2007, she turned to a neighbour to ask for help in finding heroin to kill him.
同理，我们也会问，她又怎么知道？他真的毫无康复的希望么？她又如何凭借母亲的直觉坚信昏迷的儿子“身处地狱”呢？2007年，汤姆从救护车上摔下后仅10天，她便对他的痛苦坚信不疑，并到邻居家中寻求帮助要用海洛因结束他的生命。
Significantly, all her close family have supported Mrs Inglis. More than that, they have called her courageous. "All of those who loved and were close to Tom," said his brother, Alex, "have never seen this as murder." The jury, however, was forced to do so.
很明显，Inglis夫人的家人都很支持她。不仅如此，他们还鼓励她勇敢起来。“所有爱他、和他亲近的人，”汤姆的哥哥艾利克斯说：“都不认为这是凶杀。”然而，陪审团却不得不这样做。
She was convicted of murder, for which the mandatory sentence is life. In her case, nine years in prison. Against the usual tariff, which starts at 15 years for murder, Judge Brian Barker`s minimum of nine years may reflect a degree of temperance but it does not reflect mercy.
她被宣判谋杀罪成立,这项罪名理应被判处强制性终身监禁。而在这起案件中，她仅仅被判处入狱9年。按照以往的量刑标准，谋杀罪最少被判15年。Brian Barker法官的最少9年已经是某种程度的法外开恩，但却并不表示宽容。
She has not been proved evil and she is not a danger to society. Judge Barker, upholding statute, put it flatly: "You cannot take the law into your own hands and you cannot take away life, however compelling you think the reason." He acknowledged her "unhappiness" but more forcefully described her "calculated and consistent course of criminal conduct". The law relating to murder may have no room for leniency, but judges do. Judge Barker, the Common Serjeant of London, decided to exercise it sparingly.
她并非邪恶之人，没有危害社会。维护法规的Barker法官断然表示：“不管你有天大的理由，你也不能无视法律夺走他人的生命。”他理解她的“苦衷”，但更有力地称她的犯罪行为是“蓄意的”。在杀人凶手面前，法律没有宽大仁慈的一面，法官亦然。伦敦Common Serjeant法院的 Barker法官决定保守宣判此案。
Mrs Inglis`s sentence cannot, should not, have been about protecting the terminally ill from well-intentioned relatives or "sending messages" to the public that they are not empowered to end a loved one`s agonising life. But in the present muddle and controversy over the law on assisted dying, it is not surprising that this is how it was read.
对Inglis夫人的宣判不能也不应被视为阻止人们善意地保护病症晚期的亲人，也并非向社会“传达”法律禁止人们结束亲友痛苦生命的信息。然而，由于当今社会对辅助性死亡的法律条文含糊不清、争议不断，人们如此解读此事也在情理之中。
The organisation Dignity in Dying believes it is "inappropriate" for Mrs Inglis to be tried for murder, given her compassionate motivation. "We absolutely don`t condone breaking the law," said Sarah Wootton, chief executive, "despite it being clear that Mrs Inglis was motivated by love and compassion. We are calling for the Government to revisit the Law Commission`s 2006 report which found that a review was necessary into the way these cases are tried and whether there should be a specific defence of `mercy killing`."
英国慈善组织“死的尊严”认为，考虑到她慈悲的动机，她不应被判为凶手。“我们当然不能宽恕她触犯法律。” “死的尊严”负责人Sarah Wootton说：“尽管我们知道她此举是出于爱与怜悯。我们只是希望政府能重新关注法律委员会2006年的报告。报告中提出我们有必要复审一下这些案件是如何审判的，是不是该对'安乐死'进行详细答辩。”
As George Pitcher, The Daily Telegraph`s religion editor, points out, we need to be cautious. The concept of mercy killing, he argues, could introduce a nightmare world "in which some lives are deemed inferior to others, in which the able-bodied determine the lifespan of the disabled and terminally ill… and in which `loved ones` potentially can be despatched by wicked relatives when they become inconvenient and burdensome."
英国《每日电讯报》宗教栏目编辑George Pitcher指出，在这一点上我们需要格外谨慎。安乐死的概念可能引发一场噩梦--“有些人的生命将注定低于其他人；健康的人将决定那些有缺陷或处于疾病末期的人的寿命；而‘亲人’一旦身体不便，成了家人的负担便很可能被不怀好意的亲属们吞噬。” |
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