Mother stays in jail despite winning murder appeal

A woman whose husband died after she stabbed him with a kitchen knife had her conviction for murder quashed yesterday by three judges who ruled her original trial was flawed.

But the Court of Appeal said Donna Tinker should not be released from prison for another 12 months because it could find no justification for her taking the knife and plunging it into her husband's back.

The judges also rejected evidence, supported by Tinker's nine-year-old daughter, that her husband had threatened her with a hot iron immediately before she delivered the fatal blow.

Instead, the court accepted arguments that the original trial judge had misdirected the jury. On that ground alone, the Court of Appeal substituted a mandatory life sentence for murder with one of seven years' imprisonment for manslaughter.

Imposing the new sentence, Lord Justice Kennedy said there was doubt over her intention to end her husband's life: "It is certainly true this appellant lashed out but there is reason to think she intended to kill."

Tinker, 31, who has three children including two from a previous relationships, was jailed for life in April 2000 after a jury found her guilty of the murdering her husband in June 1999. She claimed her husband held his arm around her neck and threatened her with a hot iron in the kitchen of their home in North Yorkshire.

Her single thrust of the knife punctured a lung and he died in hospital a week later.

On Tuesday, her daughter gave live evidence by video-link to the Court of Appeal in which she claimed she had seen her stepfather "put an iron in mummy's face" just before her mother killed her stepfather.

But the three Court of Appeal judges said they did not believe there was any "immediate" provocation before she used the knife. They also rejected a submission on her behalf that the court should pass a prison sentence that would allow her immediate release.

Lord Justice Kennedy, sitting with Mr Justice Sachs and Mrs Justice Hallett, said: "The fact this court must also have regard to is that a relatively young man was taken from his family and from his child by the act of this woman on that day."

Vera Baird, for Tinker, said the woman continued to love her husband and had spoken about "how much she misses him and how, when not in conflict with him, their relationship was very good". Ms Baird also reminded the judges that Mr Tinker's last words were of his love for his wife.

Lord Justice Kennedy said: "Nothing that happened on that Sunday justified the picking up of a knife and using it with at least moderate force to plunge it at least four inches into the back of her husband so as to cause him fatal injury."

But the court allowed the appeal on the basis that the directions to the jury by the trial judge relating to lies Tinker had told were unsatisfactory.

Lord Justice Kennedy said: "We conclude the direction as to lies was significantly incomplete. The jury did not receive as much assistance as it should have received. Accordingly, we allow the appeal to the extent that we set aside the conviction for murder and substitute for it a conviction for manslaughter."

Tinker's father, Alan Hall, said after the ruling that the family thought that the sentence had been "excessive".

Richard Tinker's mother, Sandra, and sister, Helen, said in a statement he died in "tragic" circumstances. "The case was never about domestic violence but about a woman with a fearsome temper," they said.