The evidence against the murder-accused Oldham mum Claire Scanlon is "entirely lacking" and there is “no direct evidence” she gave her son a fatal overdose of antidepressants, a court has heard.

The trial at Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court of Claire Scanlon, 38, who denies murdering her five-year-old son Dylan Scanlon, is entering its final stages.

On the 17th day of the murder trial on Friday, defence barrister Louise Blackwell told jurors during her closing speech that there is no evidence of how the mirtazapine (an antidepressant) tablets got into Dylan’s system and that no one knows whether the tablets were crushed or put in a drink.

Addressing the jury, she said: "There is no evidence here how in heaven's name that number of tablets got inside Dylan.

"There is nothing to say Dylan was forced to take the tablets. There is nothing to tell you how they got in his system.”

The jury was previously told that a toxicology report undertaken by Christopher Madden, a forensic toxicologist, could not say when the mirtazapine was taken and how many tablets were consumed.

Ms Blackwell also told jurors that in the statements Scanlon made to the two support workers who monitored her at Edenfield Hospital nothing she said, "suggests giving tablets" or "indicates giving tablets".

The trial previously heard that Scanlon told Joshua Davidson, a senior support worker who monitored Scanlon between January and March 2022 at Edenfield, that she had once been holding her son in her arms while she went up to the attic and dropped him causing him to fall down the ladder.

Scanlon said she finished what she was doing in the attic and when she went back down, she found Dylan dead.

The court also previously heard that in a conversation with Tracey Wills, another senior support worker at Edenfield Hospital, Scanlon said: “I know I’ve killed my son. I’ve always known it. I’m just thinking about it now because he could have been playing out in the snow.”

Ms Blackwell then told the jury that in the conversation that Scanlon had with her father Michael Scanlon she "did not say she had given tablets to Dylan" only that she had taken tablets.

Turning to the letter found in Scanlon’s bedside drawer, Ms Blackwell said that again it does not mention tablets.

"Never does she (Scanlon) say she gave tablets to Dylan", Ms Blackwell said.

She also called on the jury to consider Scanlon not as someone who was "angry", as the prosecution has claimed, but as someone who was suffering from the consequences of Huntington's disease and bouts of depression and anxiety.

Ms Blackwell said that at one point in December 2021, Scanlon searched online for hotels in Turkey and the weather in Istanbul, despite there being no evidence she had a passport or that she could afford to go abroad.

"It's evidence of desperation. It's what we see throughout.

"Not anger or manipulation. Despair at the separation and irrationality," Ms Blackwell said.

Ms Blackwell called the allegation by the prosecution that Scanlon was "planning" Dylan's death "rubbish".

"Scanlon had isolated herself from all of her family. She wasn't coping.

"That's what is playing out. That's what you can see," she said.

Ms Blackwell asked the jury to consider that when the prosecution say Scanlon way using "deception and manipulation" to remember a statement they heard earlier in the trial from Dr David Crawford, a consultant in neuropsychiatric genetics at St Mary's Hospital, Manchester, who specialises in Huntington's Disease and assessed Scalon in July 2022.

Within his statement Dr Crawford said of Scanlon: "She is not a good historian."

He also said, that in his opinion, Scanlon's Huntington's Disease would: "Likely render her incapable of looking after children without supervision".

Ms Blackwell said: "That we submit is the reality. Scanlon found herself in circumstances where she could no longer carry out the parental duties she had. She was failing in her duties."

She also asked jurors to contemplate whether Scanlon was in fact trying to "deceive" people through her inconsistent stories and to remember her "cognitive difficulties".

At the end of 2021, Ms Blackwell said that Scanlon was not, contrary to what the prosecution claim, capable of "covering anything up".

She also called on the jury to take the "dissociative episode" Scanlon suffered following Dylan’s death into account and consider how it affected what she said to people.

Ms Blackwell urged the jury to consider Scanlon's evidence "calmy and clinically".

She said: "She (Scanlon) has no memory of the ambulance arriving on December 31, or the police arriving, or of being at the police station.

"She does not remember the calls she made to her father and Mr Keenan at Edenfield and denies the conversation with her father.

"You have to look at that through the prism of the difficulties she had."

"There is a very real problem with her memory and cognitive function," she added.

Ms Blackwell told the jury that they have to decide the extent to which rational judgment on Scanlon's part was "compromised".

The defence has put forward a case of diminished responsibility. For the diminished responsibility defence to apply it needs to be proved that Scanlon suffered an "abnormality of mental functioning" at the time of Dylan's death.

The jury previously heard that Dr Hetalkumar Mehta, a consultant neuropsychiatrist who wrote a report on Scanlon, believed Scanlon struggled to act rationally around the time of Dylan's death and that she had diminished responsibility in his death.

Dr Mehta said that in the period prior to Dylan's death, Scanlon was depressed and that her cognitive functions and ability to think and act rationally would have been affected.

He said that he believes she was suffering from an abnormality of mental functioning at the time surrounding Dylan's death and that if she committed the alleged act of giving Dylan mirtazapine, her mental state would have "substantially impaired her ability to restrain herself or act rationally, which impacted on her actions".

The trial continues tomorrow.