"It wasn't a relief for me, I would have actually preferred to go to trial. To have 12 people in a jury decide whether or not I was guilty of assisting my husband's death in any way, she said. So it's not the lawmakers making the decision, it's actually the general public making the decision of whether or not I am guilty."
"We need to be considering the waste of the taxpayers' money in these investigations. If my husband had died at home, I would have been treated totally differently. I would have been given a family liaison officer and support. I would have been the grieving widow of someone that committed suicide. Because he went to Switzerland, I was criminalised and I was interviewed under caution."
Louise Shackleton, 59, spent 10 months under investigation for assisting a suicide before North Yorkshire police announced the Crown Prosecution Service decided it was not in the public interest to prosecute. She handed herself in after returning from a Dignitas clinic in Zurich where her husband Anthony died last December. Shackleton said she would have preferred to go to trial so a jury could decide her guilt. She argued that grieving people should not face police investigations and that had her husband died at home she would have received different support. Assisting a suicide remains a crime in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, with a maximum sentence of 14 years, while a new assisted‑dying bill is under House of Lords scrutiny.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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