Sentencing of woman who tried to murder toddler by giving her antidepressants delayed

The sentencing of a woman who tried to murder a toddler by repeatedly dosing the child with adult medication has been delayed.

Laura Docherty gave the little girl antidepressants and pain-killing drugs, resulting in her needing to be resuscitated and put on a ventilator because of the abuse.

Docherty, 35, formerly of Glenrothes, in Fife, denied attempting to murder the infant during an earlier trial but was unanimously convicted of the crime by a jury at the High Court in Edinburgh.

She assaulted the girl on various occasions between April 10, 2021 and February 17, 2023 at a flat in Edinburgh, at a ward in the Royal Hospital for Children and Young People in the city and elsewhere.

Docherty repeatedly administered Amitriptyline, Propranolol and Dihydrocodeine to the victim to the danger of her life.

As a result, the girl suffered seizures and episodes of reduced consciousness and required resuscitation, admission to hospital and being placed on a ventilator.

She was also subjected to unnecessary medical investigations and procedures following Docherty’s actions.

The trial judge, Michael O’Grady KC, who described Docherty’s criminal conduct as “utterly reckless and breathtakingly wicked”, previously ordered that a full risk assessment report be prepared on her which can lead to the imposition of an Order for Lifelong Restriction.

During a brief hearing before another judge on Tuesday, the case was adjourned until July 7 at the High Court in Inverness to allow defence lawyers time to consider the report.

Mr O’Grady previously said the survival of the child owed “absolutely nothing to the accused”, but was down to the considerable skill of paramedics and doctors.

The judge said Docherty was manipulative and cunning and added: “Time and again she deceived doctors and nurses and social workers and showed considerable guilt.”

During an earlier hearing, the judge pointed out that she continued to deny the offence and has shown no insight and no remorse. He said: “She considers she is the victim.”

He told Docherty: “Whatever your own trials and tribulations, whatever the turmoil in your own life, what you did to that child was utterly wicked.”

“It is impossible to forget the sight of a young child – who should have been in the flower of her childhood – prone in the back of an ambulance, desperately struggling to breathe, desperately struggling to hang on by a thread to life,” he said.

Mr O’Grady said Docherty was willing to throw away that life “for nothing more than the drama of the moment and the attention you seem to seek at every turn”.

The court heard that a report prepared on Docherty, who is in jail awaiting sentence, concluded that she has an emotionally unstable personality disorder.