Not Guilty

Prosecutor William L. Phinney's voice wavered for a moment, for he, like almost everyone in the courtroom, knew and liked the defendant. Then he pressed firmly on. "It is a difficult thing to ask for--particularly for me. But if we are to live in a society of laws, the people within that society must abide by those laws." And so last week the state of New Hampshire demanded the conviction of 41-year-old Dr. Hermann Sander, accused of the mercy killing of a dying cancer patient.

The defense attorney, white-haired Louis E. Wyman, had fumbled with his thoughts and fumbled with his papers during his summation. Tears were in his eyes as he finished. There had been no murder, he said, and euthanasia was not, therefore, an issue. Rather, as Dr. Sander had testified, 59-year-old Mrs. Abbie Borroto was already dead when he injected air ("Why I did it, I can't tell") into her wasted arm.

At 2:52 p.m., after listening to the judge's careful charge, the jury filed out. Inside the little red brick courthouse at Manchester, N.H. Dr. Sander sat with his arm around his wife.

It took the jury only 70 minutes to decide. As the twelve middle-aged jurors filed back to the jury box, one of them caught Mrs. Sander's anxious eye, grinned broadly and tipped her a reassuring wink. Then Foreman Louis C. Cutter rose to pronounce the verdict: "Not guilty."

There was a little shriek of delight from the women spectators. Then the Sanders' neighbors crowded around them jubilantly. Outside the courthouse, another crowd of 300 townspeople whooped and cheered. That night 500 neighbors assembled in the biting cold outside the Sanders' big white farmhouse for a torchlight parade.

A few days later, Sander and his wife left town for two weeks' rest. After he got back, the State Board of Registration in Medicine would decide whether, though free of murder, he had been guilty of violating medical ethics.

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