“Paige Taylor is on trial for the death of John Cronin. She has admitted helping him die. She did so because he was in great pain, and he asked her to do so. That is euthanasia, and it’s being accepted more and more throughout the world. In the past year, the California Supreme Court has upheld the right of a mentally competent adult to refuse or demand the withdrawal of medical treatment of any form. It is the individual who must live or die with the course of treatment chosen or rejected.”
He looked into the faces of the jurors. “Euthanasia is a crime of compassion, of mercy, and I daresay it takes place in some form or another in hospitals all over the world. The prosecuting attorney is asking for a death sentence. Don’t let him confuse the issue. There has never been a death sentence for euthanasia. Sixty-three percent of Americans believe euthanasia should be legal, and in eighteen states in this country, it is legal. The question is, do we have the right to compel helpless patients to live in pain, to force them to stay alive and suffer? The question has become complicated because of the great strides we’ve made in medical technology. We’ve turned the care of patients over to machines. Machines have no mercy. If a horse breaks a leg, we put it out of its misery by shooting it. With a human being, we condemn him or her to a half life that is hell.
“Dr. Taylor didn’t decide when John Cronin would die. John Cronin decided. Make no mistake about it, what Dr. Taylor did was an act of mercy. She has taken full responsibility for that. But you can rest assured that she knew nothing about the money that was left to her. What she did, she did in a spirit of compassion. John Cronin was a man with a failing heart and an untreatable, fatal cancer that had spread through his body, causing him agony. Just ask yourself one question. Under those circumstances, would you like to go on living? Thank you.” He turned, walked back to the table, and sat next to Paige.
Gus Venable rose and stood before the jury. “Compassion? Mercy?” He looked over at Paige, shook his head, then turned back to the jury. “Ladies and gentlemen, I have been practicing law in courtrooms for more than twenty years, and I must tell you that in all those years. I have never—never—seen a more clear-cut case of cold-blooded, deliberate murder for profit.”
Paige was hanging on every word, tense and pale.
“The defense talked about euthanasia. Did Dr. Taylor do what she did out of a feeling of compassion? I don’t think so. Dr. Taylor and others have testified that Mr. Cronin had only a few more days to live. Why didn’t she let him live those few days? Perhaps it was because Dr. Taylor was afraid Mrs. Cronin might learn about her husband changing his will, and put a stop to it.
“It’s a most remarkable coincidence that immediately after Mr. Cronin changed his will and left Dr. Taylor the sum of one million dollars, she gave him an overdose of insulin and murdered him.
“Again and again, the defendant has convicted herself with her own words. She said that she was on friendly terms with John Cronin, that he liked and respected her. But you have heard witnesses testify that he hated Dr. Paige Taylor, that he called her ‘that bitch,’ and told her to keep her fucking hands off him.”
Gus Venable glanced at the defendant again. There was a look of despair on Paige’s face. He turned back to the jury. “An attorney has testified that Dr. Taylor said, about the million dollars that was left to her, ‘It’s unethical. He was my patient.’ But she grabbed the money. She needed it. She had a drawer full of travel brochures at home—Paris, London, the Riviera. And bear in mind that she didn’t go to the travel agency after she got the money. Oh, no. She planned those trips earlier. All she needed was the money and the opportunity, and John Cronin supplied both. A helpless, dying man she could control. She had at her mercy a man who she admitted was in enormous pain—agony, in fact, according to her own admission. When you’re in that kind of pain, you can imagine how difficult it must be to think clearly. We don’t know how Dr. Taylor persuaded John Cronin to change his will, to cut out the family he loved and to make her his main beneficiary. What we do know is that he summoned her to his bedside on that fatal night. What did they talk about? Could he have offered her a million dollars to put him out of his misery? It’s a possibility we must face. In either case, it was cold-blooded murder.