A JURY will retire today to deliberate whether North East mum Lianne Smith should be jailed for the "abominable" killing of her young children in a Spanish hotel room.
The 45-year-old has admitted smothering five- year-old Rebecca and 11-month-old Daniel with a plastic bag at the Miramar Hotel in Lloret de Mar on the Costa Brava in May 2010.
The jury of eight men and three women will decide at the Provincial Court in Girona, North East Spain, whether she is criminally responsible for the children’s deaths.
Her defence is seeking an acquittal, claiming she was in a state of “psychiatric disturbance”.
Prosecutor Victor Pillado Quintas said yesterday that he acknowledges Smith suffered a “pathological emotional dependence and a psychotic disorder which impaired her faculties”. Instead of a total of 38 years in prison for counts of murder, he is now asking for 34.
But Mr Pillado Quintas continues to argue that Smith is criminally responsible for the deaths of Rebecca and Daniel.
He said: “I do not think there is a more abominable act than ending the life of a small child. But if there is something which is even more horrid, more vile, more despicable than taking the life of a small child, it is that a mother should take the life of her own small child. All the prosecution wants is for justice to be done.”
Jenifer Lahoz Abos, for the defence, said Smith was facing the most “painful and hard” circumstances a person can come up against.
