A Life Sentence Inside for ‘Mercy Killers’

At the age of 9 or 10, while living in a small Nebraska town, I committed the one and only act of physical brutality in my life. The house across the street had a garage that more resembled a barn and, one day, in a back corner of the loft, a bunch of us discovered a fresh litter of kittens.

This was big news in a little town, but my older sister quickly dampened the mood when she noticed that one of the kittens appeared to be either a runt or deformed. To everyone’s consternation, she declared that the mother cat wouldn’t tend to the outcast. Rather than let the kitten starve to death, my sister said, it would be better if someone put it out of its misery.

No one wanted any part of that. A softy even then, I had no perverse little-boy streak that wanted to hurt or torment animals. But the dilemma presented by my older, wiser sister was clear-cut: We could kill the kitten quickly or it would die slowly.

Who knows, maybe I’d seen “Old Yeller” the week before. Maybe my father had recently given me a spiel about “being a man” and accepting responsibility. For whatever reasons, I said I would do it and grabbed a nearby shovel. Unable to force myself to strike the kitten directly, I remember putting the runt under a thin covering--either a carpet remnant or cardboard box.

A few whacks from the shovel, and the deed was done. We buried the kitten in a shoe box.

It was a killing, pure and simple.

We called it mercy.

This unsettling memory surfaced after reading about 54-year-old James Guthrie Jr. of La Mirada, freed last week from Orange County Jail after serving 10 months for fatally injuring his disease-wracked mother last June.

Not even the prosecutor who pressed for a manslaughter conviction protested Guthrie’s release. Everyone accepted Guthrie’s contention--though he expressed remorse afterward--that he killed his mother to spare her further suffering. He had asked nurses to do it for him, but they wouldn’t. Having seen cancer ravage his father, Guthrie said he had promised his mother he wouldn’t let the same thing happen to her.

No one disputes that his 79-year-old mother was near death or that her days were spent in frequent pain and discomfort. No one disputes that Guthrie had spent many a day and night at his mother’s bedside.

In short, no one disputes that Guthrie believed he was putting his mother “out of her misery.”

A battery of reports from psychologists, medical people and his mother’s acquaintances sympathized with him. Almost everyone familiar with the Guthrie case seems to think that he was being the dutiful son.

Why, then, is an old softy like me so troubled by this case? All my instincts tell me that no elderly person should have to spend his or her final days in suffering. I don’t want to spend mine that way. Dr. Kevorkian, let me know how I can reach you.

It’s all in the way Guthrie did it. Apparently unable to end his mother’s life with drugs, Guthrie ended it violently. Wrapping a heavy metal pipe in tape and a sock, he stood behind his mother as she sat up in bed and hit her in the back of the head. The blow, however, did not kill her. So, he hit her again. And again.

Three days later, his mother died.

It’s not that I doubt the assessment of Guthrie as a loving son. His public defender said it didn’t matter how his mother died at her son’s hands, only that his motivation was pure in wanting to end her suffering.

I can’t buy that. I haven’t seen any nuances in the physician-assisted death movement that accommodates clubbing someone to death with a pipe. Even more troubling is that there’s no indication that Guthrie’s mother had signed off on having her son clobber her.

Perhaps it’s too fine a distinction as to whether Guthrie acted to end his mother’s suffering, or his own.

Like I said, I’ll accept the majority view that he did it for her. If I’m being inconsistent in saying that I wouldn’t be bothered at all if he gave her a morphine overdose, so be it.

I have a hard time equating several blows to the head with ending someone’s suffering. In a sense, though, Guthrie will pay for his action. My guess is, he’ll be thinking about what he did in that hospital room till the day he dies.

So James Guthrie gets a life sentence, after all.

As he will find out, violence, even when cloaked in mercy, lingers in the mind long after the moment has passed.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821, by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail at dana.parsons@latimes.com.