Our thanks to K for this. Excerpts:

The court heard Patrick poured her husband about two-and-a-half glasses of the spiked drink on Christmas Day 2013.

When he became ill the next morning she phoned the ambulance service and told them the alcohol had caused his previous kidney failure to “flare up again”. When ambulance staff arrived his wife of more than 25 years handed them a fake “do not resuscitate” note, the jury was told. [my emphasis]

Mr Patrick spent several days in an induced coma before having to learn to walk and talk again during a year of rehabilitation, having already survived an earlier attempt by his wife to kill him the previous October. [my emphasis]

The court heard Mr Patrick had not wanted to pursue a case against his wife and daughter and did not want to see them put in prison.

In a statement he said: “I will never get over it. It broke me. I’m just a shell now. This was a person I was married to for over 25 years. A person I loved and love.”

In mitigation, Julia Flanagan, for Katherine Patrick, said her client had been ‘physically chastised’ by her father as a child and became ‘overly reliant on her mother.

Let’s try a gender switch on the last sentence, shall we?

In mitigation, John Flanagan, for Douglas Patrick, said his client had been ‘physically chastised’ by his mother as a child and became ‘overly reliant’ on his father.

Somehow I can’t see a defence lawyer uttering such an incredible statement in the name of ‘mitigation’ for a man in similar circumstances.

If you haven’t already seen Alison Tieman’s excellent short video on the difference between men’s and women’s moral agencies, it’s here. To be fair, it’s there, even if you have seen it.