Man slits wife's throat in 'act of love,' calls for assisted dying law

A 73-year-old man, Graham Mansfield, who slit his wife's throat at their house in Trafford in March 2021, has been cleared of murder charges.

However, he has been found guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter and given a suspended two-year jail sentence.

The couple had made a suicide pact as his wife, Dyanne Mansfield, was in extreme pain because of her lung cancer. He said that he did what he had to do "out of love."

They decided to die together in the garden of their house and spent their last night crying and telling each other how much they loved one another, per a report in The Mirror.

On the day of the incident on March 23, 2021, Mansfield and his wife put their coats on, locked up their house and asked each other if they were ready. To which his wife responded by saying that "she won't make a noise."

He then slit her throat and tried to take his own life, but he had to call the police when he woke up still alive the next day. He begged paramedics to let him die and told the police that he had killed his wife.

"It went against every fibre of my body. I ran round to the front of the chair. I said 'What have I done?' I sat next to her, put my arm round her and told her I loved her," he said.

Dyanne Mansfield's cancer had spread to her neck, and had made it hard to even swallow food. A cancer expert told the court that she had between a week and four weeks to live when she died.

Mansfield is now calling for a change in the law to allow assisted dying. In an interview with The Guardian, he said that if he had to do it again to put his wife at peace, he would. He added that the killing was "an act of love, of compassion, to end her suffering."

The judge sentenced him to a two year suspended prison sentence stating that he was "entirely satisfied" that Mansfield had acted out of "love and compassion" for his spouse.