ELDERLY MAN RECEIVES PROBATION AFTER KILLING WIFE AMID MENTAL HEALTH DECLINE
A pensioner who strangled his alcoholic wife after ''going through hell'' in the last decade of their 47-year marriage was allowed to walk free from the High Court in Edinburgh yesterday.Judge Lord Milligan placed 74-year-old David McLeish on probation for three years.
The judge stated that it was a very rare case where a killing was committed with apparent ''sustained deliberation'' but did not require a jail sentence.
The major mitigating factor was McLeish's mental state at the time of the incident.
Earlier, it was revealed that McLeish, a retired newsagent, was suffering from the onset of either dementia or Alzheimer's disease when he strangled his wife, Dorothy, 72, in their flat on Glasgow's Paisley Road West on September 7 last year.
McLeish had initially been charged with murder, but the Crown accepted his plea to the reduced charge of culpable homicide after recognizing that his mental state was disturbed.
The court heard that Mrs.
McLeish had been an alcoholic since her retirement 11 years prior and had been abusive and difficult throughout that period.
On the day of the killing, Mrs.
McLeish, who was drinking, ordered her husband out of their flat.
He went into a bedroom to avoid her, but she followed him.
In the bedroom, he grabbed her by the throat and said, ''I am going to murder you.'' She returned to her chair in the living room, but shortly after, McLeish came into the room with a length of cord and strangled her.
Following the act, he phoned the police and confessed to the crime.
McLeish admitted culpable homicide during an earlier court appearance in Glasgow.
