A mother who killed her newborn son by smothering him with cling film has been sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in jail. Ineta Dzinguviene, 38, was sentenced by Lady Poole at the High Court in Glasgow on Tuesday after she pleaded guilty to culpable homicide on the basis of diminished responsibility at an earlier hearing in Edinburgh.
Paulius was just hours old when Dzinguviene placed a piece of cling film over his mouth and smothered him to death at her home in Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire, in April 2010. She had previously been convicted of murdering him following trial and sentenced to life with a minimum term of 15 years in jail in 2011, but this conviction was quashed in March by the appeal court.
The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission had referred her case to the appeal court after fresh evidence was obtained about her mental state at the time of her son's death, which showed she suffered from complex post-traumatic stress disorder after suffering years of domestic and sexual abuse. She has now effectively served her sentence, which was backdated to when she was first remanded in custody on April 15, 2010. However, she faces a 15-year prison sentence in her native Lithuania for killing her newborn daughter Paulina in 2009 by wrapping her in a plastic bag and placing her in a cupboard.
At the sentencing on Tuesday, Lady Poole told the court: "You had an upbringing characterised by neglect and then a troubled marriage."
The judge said she had taken into account a criminal justice social work report and everything said in Dzinguviene's defence.
Lady Poole continued: "You have had a very difficult life. In particular, your treatment at the hands of others prior to being imprisoned makes difficult reading.
"You have various issues with your health. You have been in custody since April 15, 2010. In prison you have engaged well, including with programmes offered to you.
"Although your culpability at the time of your offending was diminished by your mental state, the harm you caused was extreme. You took the life of your son Paulius. He was a newborn baby. You deprived your son of his life and all he could have been.
"After you killed Paulius, you hid his body in a bag amongst rubbish in the common stairway where you lived. Killing a defenceless baby is behaviour which society cannot tolerate. You must be punished for what you did."
