Daughter pleads for mercy as she awaits verdict in Hunter trial

After 19 months in prison, David Hunter is expected to hear the verdict from a three-panel judge today, over the killing of his wife Janice who was suffering from cancer, which took place in 2021.

If Hunter, now 75, is found guilty, then everything hinges on whether the judges will decide the murder was premeditated or not.

A premeditated charge comes with a life sentence in prison.

Ahead of the verdict, Hunter’s daughter Lesley Cawthorne said “I’m trying to brace myself for the worst but I’m really hoping for the best.”

Speaking to Good Morning Britain TV programme, she made a plea for compassion from the judges, urging them to let her dad come back home.

“It’s what my mum would want, what I want, and what we need as a family.”

She said her dad was feeling anxious and inevitably lonely, sharing a cell with inmates who don’t speak English.

“My dad is a good, good man.”

“I love my dad.”

Speaking to the BBC this morning, defence lawyer Michael Polak said Hunter “has done the right thing for all of his life in a long, loving relationship”.

“He’s done what he did out of love for Janice.”

Hunter was married to Janice for 50 years, and previously described to court how she was his best friend. He has always maintained he killed her as an act of mercy, as her cancer caused her to suffer immensely, leaving her house-bound and ill.

She could not take it any more and begged him for weeks to take her life, Hunter claims, as he could no longer bear to see her suffer.