A LAWYER jailed for neglect after her elderly mum died slumped on a sofa surrounded by her own filth has been cleared by the Court of Appeal.

Emma-Jane Kurtz, a solicitor who championed the rights of the vulnerable, was jailed for two and a half years at Oxford Crown Court in April.

The 42-year old was convicted of wilfully neglecting her 79-year-old mother, Cecily Kurtz, by a jury earlier this year. During that trial prosecutors said that her mother, who had depression and obsessive compulsive disorder, had been left by her daughter to live in squalid conditions on her sofa.

She was found emaciated and slumped in the same clothes she had worn for years at the home they shared in July 2014, the court heard, and with urine burns on her legs and back.

Prosecutors said her trousers came apart at a touch, and her clothes had remained unchanged for years. The cause of her death was deep vein thrombosis and a dent in the sofa showed she had not moved for a considerable time.

Today, three senior judges said it had not been proved that Mrs Kurtz lacked the mental capacity to make her own decisions.

Lady Justice Macur said that meant the trial judge had misdirected jurors and her daughter's conviction had to be quashed. Judge Peter Ross, jailing 42-year-old Kurtz in April, said the case involved weeks and months of the most severe neglect.

He said: “The state of Cecily Kurtz’s body looked like a photographed scene from the end of the Second World War in one of the concentration camps.”

Miss Kurtz, of Blackwater Way, Didcot, had always protested her innocence, insisting she did her best to care for her independent-minded mother.

Her elderly mother knew her own mind, the court heard during the trial, and "would have nothing to do with doctors."

Miss Kurtz was of previous blameless character and solicitor colleagues spoke of her "particular empathy for the elderly."

Overturning her conviction today, Lady Justice Macur said it had been necessary for prosecutors to prove that Mrs Kurtz lacked mental capacity.

The failure to do that meant jurors at Miss Kurtz's trial had been "misdirected," ruled the judge, who was sitting with Mr Justice Julian Knowles and Judge Mark Wall QC.

Evidence suggested that "at a minimum, Kurtz should reasonably have believed her mother to lack mental capacity in matters of personal welfare" the court of appeal heard, and without proof that the pensioner was no longer capable of making her own decisions, her daughter was guilty of nothing.

Lady Justice Macur said: "That means the judge misdirected the jury in a material way and we are satisifed that Kurtz's conviction is therefore unsafe."

Crown Prosecution Service lawyers had asked for Kurtz to be retried, but the judge ruled another trial "would not be in the public interest."