Confessed Mercy Killer Released by O.C. Judge

James W. Guthrie Jr. had seen his father die of cancer and swore he wouldn’t let his mother--racked by cancer, pneumonia, emphysema and arthritis--suffer the same way.

He begged nurses at the La Habra hospital to give his 79-year-old mother more painkillers, even offered them $5,000 to find a way to end it all. They wouldn’t act, so last June he did.

On Thursday, 300 days after Guthrie used a metal pipe to bash his frail mother, the La Mirada man was set free by an Orange County judge who said the confessed killer acted out of--and deserved--mercy.

Swayed by psychological reports and heart-rending statements by Evelyn Guthrie’s doctors, nurses and neighbors, Superior Court Judge Kazuharu Makino sentenced the 54-year-old man to time served, 2,000 community service hours and a $200 fine.

The case was marked by a bizarre mix of savagery and sympathy. Guthrie told officers he had wrapped the pipe in tape and a sock “to protect Mother’s pretty face.” When the police snapped the cuffs on him at Friendly Hills Regional Medical Center, the seemingly guilt-ridden Guthrie asked them to “put me in a hole so deep, even the cockroaches can’t touch me.”

Despite the brutality of the crime, the punishment seemed to satisfy both sides.

The prosecutor had asked for a state prison sentence of six years, but after hearing the judge’s ruling Thursday, she called the outcome fair. While the act was “extremely barbaric,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Claudia Silbar said she had no doubts that the defendant truly acted out of mercy.

“I don’t have any bitterness about this decision,” Silbar said. “This was an unusual case and a very difficult decision, and I totally respect [Makino’s] decision.”

Court records depict Guthrie as a devoted son who had been bruised by the outside world but always found solace and support from his mother. She paid the bills as he tinkered with inventions he hoped would make him a success, and they bolstered each other when throat cancer killed his father in 1979 after three agonizing months in an intensive care unit.

“He pledged to his mother that she wouldn’t suffer like the father,” a psychologist wrote after interviewing Guthrie in jail.

The victim’s doctor recalled that Guthrie “cried the whole time” when told his mother was terminally ill. The cancer that was removed during major lung surgery had returned, and her other ailments made breathing a chore. Guthrie’s mother, a retired school district worker, had long refused life-support machines, perhaps remembering her husband’s final days.

Guthrie had harsh words for the nurses and doctors who tended his mother, bitterly criticizing them for not boosting her pain medication. He later told a psychologist that he had heard the nurses laughing at their ward station and that his anger had grown. He brought his mother cold water and tried to comfort her, spending sleepless nights at her side, the records show.

One day, weary and on edge, Guthrie went home and plucked a heavy metal rod from his workshop, a pipe he planned to use in one of his aquarium inventions. He admitted to police that he carried it in his car for three days as he agonized over his mother’s plight.

At dinner time in the hospital on June 27, he leaned his mother forward in bed and brought the rod down on her from behind, he told police. Then he stepped into the hallway and told a nurse to call the police. “You got rid of us both,” he told the nurses. He went back into the room, saw that his mother was still alive and hit her again and again before the hospital staff restrained him.

As they held him, he looked at his mother, slumped over in bed, and said, “I am sorry, Mother.” When he realized that she had survived the botched attack, he was inconsolable. He told police he belonged in a deep pit.

For three days after the attack, Guthrie’s mother remained alive, and Guthrie was initially held on a charge of attempted murder. She died, but the charge was eventually lowered to manslaughter with a deadly weapon, which carries a maximum penalty of 12 years in state prison.

He spent 10 months in jail as psychological tests were ordered and prosecutors mulled how to proceed. Guthrie pleaded guilty last month and was summoned to court Thursday for sentencing.

It was a “comprehensive investigation” of the attacker’s background, his emotional state and the lack of any personal gain that led to the downgraded charge, Silbar said. One psychologist described the defendant as “caring, devoted and very close to his mother” and as acting out of “overwhelming stress.”

Guthrie’s life had been grim long before his mother’s health declined, records show. The Kansas native bounced from job to job after a stint as a “dock monkey” in the Navy in the 1960s, he told psychologists. For most of his life, he lived with his parents and doted on his mother. He said he was shy and believed he was unattractive to the opposite sex.

He told court-appointed psychologists that he sometimes felt angry at the world. He also said he had been haunted by nightmares of the bloody hospital attack as the weeks passed in jail.

The prosecutor said the wrenching case had left her grappling with the definition of mercy, by both individuals and the state.

“This crime was committed with absolutely no ill will. The whole motivation behind this was to end his mother’s suffering,” Silbar said. “But we can’t send the message to society that it’s OK to do this.”

Guthrie cried in court and thanked his attorney after the brief morning hearing to decide his punishment. He was expected to be processed and released from jail by nightfall.

“Anyone who has seen someone close to them die of cancer understands this case,” Public Defender Jim Appel said. “How he killed her doesn’t matter. He didn’t do this to hurt her; he acted to end her suffering.”