THE story of North East miner David Hunter is heartbreaking. Janice, his wife of 57 years, was in such pain that she begged him to kill her and, after six weeks, he did, placing his hands over her mouth and nose.

Human life is sacred, and so the authorities in Cyprus charged him with murder, meaning, if guilty, he faced the rest of his life in jail.

But after 19 months in custody, he accepted a manslaughter charge and has been released. The judge accepted his defence that he was “relieving the person of their suffering”.

He was, as we do to our most beloved of pets, putting his wife out of her misery.

Is that a crime? Or is it an act of love? An immense act of love?

Many of us, when we are certain we have gone beyond the point of no return, would prefer to go the same way – although none of us would want our legacy to be our partner facing the trauma that Mr Hunter has endured these last 19 months.

As medical advances enable more of us to stay alive for longer, but with no guarantee of the quality of that extra life, this dilemma is going to become more common.

But, of course, we cannot have a law which encourages one person to kill another.

Therefore, death is going to remain this grey area, and while we salute Mr Hunter’s bravery and hope that he finds peace in his remaining years, the best the rest of us can hope for is that we are never in the heartbreaking, agonising situations that either he or his wife found themselves in.