A bereaved nurse who injected a friend's baby girl with an overdose of insulin has been sentenced.
A bereaved nurse who injected a friend's baby girl with an overdose of insulin has been sentenced.
Off-duty nurse Veronica Duncan administered the jab to the four-month-old child after she lost her own baby daughter.
Sentencing her at the High Court in Edinburgh today, temporary judge Roger Craik QC placed her on three years' probation with several conditions, saying he acknowledged she had been suffering from an "abnormal grief".
Duncan, 41, pleaded guilty to assaulting the baby to the danger of her life in the Borders on March 7.
She was originally charged with attempting to murder the girl, but a guilty plea to the reduced charge was accepted.
Mr Craik told her what she had done was a "dreadful thing" but he added: "It's quite clear from all the material you weren't in your right mind.
"The tragic death of your own 16-month-old daughter had left you suffering from an abnormal grief reaction which in my opinion amounted to a mental illness.
"I am also told that without this mental condition it's most unlikely you would have committed the offence."
Duncan, who has been detained for nearly eight months since the attack, lost her own daughter in May last year.
On the day of the attack Duncan had called at the child's family home and invited her mother to go to a coffee morning.
While the mother got changed to go out Duncan offered to dress the baby and it is thought that this is when she injected the insulin.
Relatives of the child started crying after Duncan was led out of court.
Sentencing her to the probation term, Mr Craik stipulated three conditions: that she would continue to have psychiatric treatment as appropriate; that she would have no unsupervised contact with any child under the age of seven; and that she would be registered under the Protection of Children Scotland Act.
He warned her that if she failed to adhere to the conditions she would be back before the court.
Doctors will have to monitor the baby girl until she is at least three to assess whether Duncan's actions will have any lasting impact on her health.
The mother of the child has since told a newspaper that Duncan even visited the family in hospital after the attack, but did not own up to what she had done.
It was initially suspected that the baby had a virus, but a blood test revealed that her blood sugar levels were critically low.
Medics later discovered this could have been caused by insulin.
Doctors found out what was wrong with the youngster when she was only minutes from death and managed to save her.
Mr Craik offered his sympathies to the family in court today but said he took into account that Duncan had no previous convictions and that she had obeyed her treatment order after the attack.
He added that to send her to prison would risk "undoing" the work already done on her mental health.
But he said she would have to remain under the supervision of the court until medical bosses were happy about her state of mind.
Defence counsel Andrew Murphy said that Duncan remained mentally fragile and advocated ongoing treatment and counselling.
He said that she had already effectively served more than a year of incarceration, and that she had responded to all the treatments she received.
Mr Murphy added: "Her own personal life is in complete disarray and her own family has broken up.
"It is almost cheap currency to mention remorse but that is referred to in the social inquiry report (for Duncan)".
At a previous hearing, prosecutors said Duncan was a registered general nurse who worked at the intensive care department of Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, and had access to insulin.
Her daughter, named Anna, died at the family home in the Borders.
