A DAGENHAM mother who was jailed after giving her son a lethal heroin injection in a mercy killing has lost her appeal.

Frances Inglis, 58, of Maxey Road, was convicted of her son Tom’s murder and jailed for life in January.

Three judges rejected her appeal but reduced the minimum number of years she must serve before becoming eligible for parole from seven to five.

Her lawyer Alan Newman QC told an appeal hearing in October: “She was entirely taken up with the belief that Tom was suffering and that he was trapped in a sort of living hell and in pain.”

But last week, Lord Judge said: “There is no doubt at all that the appellant was subjected to great stress and anguish, but dealing with it briefly and starkly, there was, as our analysis of the evidence underlines, not a scintilla of evidence that when the appellant injected the fatal dose of heroin into her son she had lost her self-control.”

He added: “We must underline that the law of murder does not distinguish between murder committed for malevolent reasons and murder motivated by familial love. “Subject to well-established partial defences, like provocation or diminished responsibility, mercy killing is murder.”

Tom Inglis, 22, suffered severe head injuries when he fell out of a moving ambulance in July 2007.

His mother, who worked as a carer for disabled children, first tried to end his life two months after the accident when he was being treated at Queens Hospital in Romford.

His heart stopped for six minutes but he was revived.

The mother-of-three was charged with attempted murder before successfully trying again in November 2008, after barricading herself in her son’s room at the Gardens nursing home in Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire, and supergluing the door.

After the conviction, her family said they were standing by her over Tom’s death.