A Nova Scotia judge sentenced a man to six years in prison for killing his 72-year-old wife after promising to help her take her own life so she could avoid being hospitalized or sent to long-term care.
Iris Dodd and Douglas Andrew Smith had been married for nearly 33 years in 2022, when they found themselves facing eviction from their home in Kingsport, N.S., with nowhere else to go, according to an agreed statement of facts read aloud in provincial Supreme Court on Tuesday.
Dodd was nearly blind and could barely walk, and she asked her husband to lay out her pills and go for a drive, so he’d be free from any responsibility when she took them all and died, the court head.
Smith, then 71, agreed. But he worried the overdose would only make her sicker.
“In a singular moment, exhausted and confused about what was best for the victim, Mr. Smith resolved all these thoughts and fears in his head by getting up and holding a pillow over the victim’s face,” Crown prosecutor Daniel Rideout said, reading from the statement of facts.
A quiet cry can then be heard on the audio recording of Tuesday’s proceedings, and Rideout pauses for a few moments. The judge then asks the defence if Smith needs to take a break.
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The couple’s relationship was caring and supportive and they’d lived together since they were married on Nov. 1, 1989, court heard. She had a stroke in 2018, which triggered a slow but progressive decline in her health. She began to use a wheelchair when she could no longer manage the stairs. Her vision deteriorated and fibromyalgia caused her daily pain.
When they were living in Kingsport, about 85 kilometres northwest of Halifax, their landlord said in July 2021 that they had to move out. A court ordered them to leave on May 1, 2022, Rideout said.
Taking care of Dodd hampered Smith’s search for a new home, and he couldn’t find a place they could afford that would suit their accessibility needs.
Dodd had been a nursing assistant in hospitals and long-term care and she was adamant that she never wanted to live in either setting, “blind and bound to her chair,” Rideout said.
Days before their eviction, she told Smith about her overdose plans and he promised he’d help lay out her pills, so she could see them. They decided to carry out the plan the next day. But after Dodd fell asleep, Smith began worrying that her medications wouldn’t kill her, and that she’d just become more incapacitated.
“Mr. Smith couldn’t stop thinking of the victim being alone at the time of death, as he did not want her to be alone, and he did not want her to experience any fear in those moments of passing,” Rideout read to the court.
“(He) was emotionally and physically exhausted from the pressure they were under to find a new home, preparing to vacate the home, caring for the victim, and now processing for the first time the victim’s expressed in clear desire to end her life and his agreement to help her in that plan.”
He killed Dodd on April 30, 2022, believing it was the “best way to ensure the victim would not suffer more pain or fear,” Rideout said.
Smith left the home and checked into a hotel, but he couldn’t sleep. He drove back to his house in the early morning hours and sat with his wife. He wrote emails to her family, their landlord and their realtor, to tell them she was dead, Rideout said. He then gathered up some belongings, sat one more time with Dodd before driving about 12 kilometres to the RCMP detachment in New Minas, N.S.
Sitting in his van in the parking lot, he called 911 and told the dispatcher what happened. An officer came out and arrested him.
In April, he was set to stand trial for a charge of second-degree murder. Instead, he pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of manslaughter, avoiding a trial.
A spokesperson for Nova Scotia’s public prosecution service said Tuesday that Smith’s six-year sentence worked out to five years and seven months, less two days, after accounting for the time he had already spent in custody.
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