In “A Crime of Compassion,” the narrator Barbara Huttmann is accused of being a murderer.

Mac is a
patient dying from lung cancer, and Huttmann is his nurse. Huttmann has conflicting thoughts. As nurse,
she is obligated to follow the rules of the hospital: if someone stops breathing, she must call a code. As a
person, she doesn’t want to let Mac suffer, since he says, “Mercy…for God’s sake, please let me go.”
Barbara Huttman was a murderer by law, but not by ethics. A murderer inflicts the cause of death. She
didn’t cause his death. In a way, she was a savior; she didn’t save his life, but she saved the patient
from suffering and agony.

I. Barbara Huttmann was a murderer by law: murderers inflict the cause of death.
a. Murder laws
b. Talk about hospital policy
c. Murder dictionary definition
II. She may have been a murderer by law, but she was not a murderer by ethics.
a. Interviews about ethics
b. Compare/contrast another story where the person was not ethical
c. Medical ethics textbooks
d. Newspaper articles or medical articles about “the right to die”
e. Put yourself in Mac’s shoes—she did for Mac what she would have wanted done for
herself.
III. Even though she was seen as a murderer, Huttmann was in fact Mac’s savior. She didn’t
save Mac’s life, but she did prevent him from suffering.
a. Text: Mac’s suffering and what she did to prevent it.