Barbara Eckersley: Southern Highlands ‘green dream’ nursing home killer avoids jail over death of Dr Mary White

In a ‘rare case’, a woman who deliberately killed her elderly mother - a prominent former scientist - with a lethal dose of a veterinary drug won’t spend time behind bars.

Barbara Eckersley set out to kill her mother when she mixed a lethal dose of the veterinary drug “green dream” into her nursing home soup and sat by her bed spoon feeding it to her in Bundanoon in 2018, a judge has found.

Supreme Court Justice Robert Beech-Jones said Eckersley had since convinced herself that the deliberate poisoning of her mother, prominent former scientist Dr Mary White, was an innocent attempt to ease the 92-year-old’s suffering.

Barbara Eckersley leaves the Supreme Court in Goulburn.

Eckersley faced court for the final time on Thursday morning, where she sat flanked by prison guards inside the iron-caged dock at the Goulburn courthouse, nervously waiting to hear whether Justice Beech-Jones would jail her over her mother’s death.

A jury in April cleared her of Dr White’s murder, and instead found her guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter.

Justice Robert Beech-Jones said Eckersley was a caring and compassionate daughter who killed Dr White out of a misguided sense of love and desperation, while in the depths of serious depression.

“The only reasonable inference … was that (Eckersley) intended to end her mother’s (perceived) suffering by ending her mother’s life,” he said.

Barbara Eckersley arrives at court ahead of her sentencing on Thursday.

Dr Mary White was a renowned scientist. Picture: Supplied Barbara Eckersley

Her depression, undiagnosed at the time, amounted to a “substantial impairment”, and reduced

Justice Beech-Jones bluntly said the case was not about putting voluntary euthanasia on trial, as some commentators have argued.

Dr White, he said, was elderly, bedridden and unable to care for herself, but there was evidence she was distressed or that her condition had rapidly deteriorated.

Partially paralysed and unable to speak since a stroke, Dr White also never consented to being spoon fed a lethal dose of the veterinary drug pentobarbital, commonly known as “green dream”.

Barbara Eckersley leaves the Goulburn Supreme Court.

Justice Beech-Jones said the law needed to protect the lives of the vulnerable and elderly, but said it was “particularly unsurprising that the jury refused to attach the label ‘murderer’ to Mrs Eckersley’’.

A series of references from Eckersley’s family and friends described her as “caring” and “wonderful”, and Justice Beech-Jones said the trial appeared to have been an excruciating ordeal for her.

Nobody provided the court with a victim impact statement on Dr White’s behalf, and Justice Beech-Jones said Eckersley’s family appeared grateful for the care she had given her mother in the years before she killed her.

As far back as 2019, Eckersley had offered to plead guilty to manslaughter in a bid to avoid a trial, but prosecutors rejected those offers.

Barbara Eckersley, outside the Goulburn Supreme Court, while her lawyer, Adrian McKenna, addresses the media.

Justice Beech-Jones said killing someone was always a serious crime, but said Eckersley was one of the “rare cases” where manslaughter did not need to be punished with a jail sentence.

He handed Eckersley a two-year community corrections order, and ordered her to begin seeing a psychologist.

Outside court, her lawyer, Adrian McKenna, said Eckersley was relieved to not go to jail, and grateful for the compassion the jury showed in acquitting her of murder.