- Lianne Smith looked impassive as unanimous verdict was read out
- She admitted smothering son and daughter at Costa Brava resort
- Her defence lawyer called for acquittal on grounds of mental illness
- Psychiatrist claimed Smith was in a psychotic state and acted 'out of love'
- Jury said she had been 'fully conscious' her actions were wrong
- Her paedophile partner is not the children's father, court heard yesterday
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Facing prison: Handcuffed Lianne Smith leaving the court after being found guilty
Lianne Smith faces up to 34 years in a Spanish prison after she was last night found guilty of murdering her two children.
The British mother stared blankly at the floor as the unanimous verdict rang out at Girona Provincial Court, in north-east Spain.
The 45-year-old is now on suicide watch after previously trying to kill herself.
After eight hours' deliberation, the jury foreman announced the panel of seven men and two women had believed Smith was 'fully conscious' and knew what she was doing when she smothered Rebecca, five, and 11-month-old Daniel in their beds in a Costa Brava hotel.
They flatly rejected Smith's defence claim that she was insane, pronouncing her guilty on both counts of murder.
It means she faces spending the next three decades in a standard Spanish prison cell, as the jury rejected an alternative verdict which would have allowed her to serve her sentence in a psychiatric wing.
Jurors agreed Smith, from Lichfield, Staffordshire, did suffer from an unspecified psychosis and from depression – but ruled she was not criminally insane.
They said she 'took advantage of the trust the children gave her as their mother' and their 'defencelessness' as sleeping children.
Judge Adolfo Garcia Morales will sentence her at a later date.
Outside court, prosecutor Victor Pillado Quintas said: 'Today justice has been done for two defenceless small children who were murdered in the most abominable and vile way – by their own mother.'
After the verdicts, the judge and lawyers in the case joined members of the jury in a local bar.
Scroll down to see the interview in which Lianne admits to killing her children...
Unanimous verdict: The jury rejected Smith's defence claim that she was mentally ill
Appalling case: Smith is led into the court in Girona, Spain, for the final day of her trial
Blank stare: Lianne Smith looked impassive as the unanimous verdict was read out
During a four-day trial, the court heard how Smith killed the children after her fugitive partner, TV hypnotist Martin Smith, was arrested on child sex charges at their home in Barcelona.
She became obsessed with the idea that UK social services would put the youngsters in care – which she considered a fate 'worse than death'.
She asked her daughter if she would prefer to spend a few brilliant days with her mother or a horrible lifetime without her.
When Rebecca said she wanted to stay with her mother, Smith took the children to the resort of Lloret de Mar to give them 'a perfect holiday'.
They checked into room 101 of the Hotel Miramar on May 15, 2010.
After two days of playing together and posing for seaside snaps, she put them to bed at about 7pm and waited an hour until they were asleep.
Then she took a plastic shopping bag and suffocated them.
The next day – having tried to commit suicide – she instructed reception to summon Spanish police.
During her trial Smith refused to answer more than 100 questions from prosecutor Victor Pillado Quintas.
The jury were shown a chilling video of Smith calmly confessing to detectives as she sat on a bed in the next-door hotel room.
'Conscious': The 45-year-old looked on edge today as she waited to hear if the jury would accept her defence of mental illness
Martin Smith, who was found dead in his cell in January
She told officers: 'I have ended the lives of my two children.
'I gave the children a three-day holiday, a perfect holiday. I knew they were going to take my children to England.
'My intention was that my children and me together would go. It wasn't just the children.'
The court heard Smith was 'pathologically obsessed' with her partner Martin Smith – they shared their surname but she was not his wife.
As she was led away to the cells last night, British social services faced questions about their role in the tragedy.
Both Cumbria and Staffordshire social services knew Rebecca was potentially at risk when Martin Smith was arrested on November 1, 2007, on suspicion of raping his step-daughter Sarah, Smith's elder daughter from a previous relationship.
Yet they allowed the family to flee to Spain before Rebecca could be taken to safety.
Last night a blame game erupted as Cumbria social services said they had passed the file to Staffordshire, who said they were relying on the police to chase the family in Spain.
Martin Smith was previously thought to be the father of Daniel and Rebecca, whom his partner has admitted killing in a Spanish hotel room
Smith admits suffocating Rebecca and Daniel but claims to have been in an unsound mental state at the time of the killings
Smith in court in yesterday, where she insisted the DNA test results showing her partner was not the father of her two children must have been incorrect
Meanwhile the Spanish equivalent of social services claimed: 'Nobody put us on alert and so nobody took any measures to protect the children.'
Even after Martin Smith was deported to the UK, Staffordshire social services did not ask its counterpart to retrieve Rebecca, and two weeks later she was dead.
A Staffordshire council spokesman said: 'During the short time the family were resident in Staffordshire, the council did everything possible to initiate safeguarding procedures, and have assisted police fully in their continued investigations into this case.'
Smith is led into court yesterday after her lawyer called for her to be acquitted on mental health grounds
Smith, pictured with her son Daniel, was placed on suicide watch after learning of her partner's hanging in prison
DID LIANNE SMITH WORK AS A PROSTITUTE? NEW RIDDLE OVER PATERNITY
The riddle over the dead children's paternity took a twist yesterday when it was suggested their mother had once worked as a prostitute.
Lianne Smith used to offer 'personal services' to clients across the North of England, police sources said.
Her trial in Spain heard the bombshell DNA revelation that the children she suffocated were not fathered by her partner, paedophile Martin Smith. He killed himself in January in prison.
The mystery over their true parentage was made deeper by the fact Rebecca was born in Blackpool in 2004, and Daniel was born in Barcelona in 2009.
A senior police source in Britain said: 'In the 1990s, the family had very little money and at one stage were even forced to live for some time in a static caravan.
'During this time Lianne was offering "holistic" or "personal" services to a wide range of clients in the North, and Martin Smith would drive her to one of these sessions and wait in the car while she conducted the business.
'It is generally understood by those investigating the case that Miss Smith was offering sexual services to those clients – that she was in fact a prostitute.'
I don't suppose that they could deport her to somewhere that has the death sentence?
- Charles , Auckland, New Zealand, 21/6/2012 21:05
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