KEY POINTS:
A 49-year-old man accused of administering a fatal dose of morphine to his terminally ill mother will stand trial for attempted murder - but not for murder.
The man, whose identity is suppressed, had been appeared in the Taumarunui District Court for a depositions hearing on charges of murder and attempted murder.
The court decided today that he would stand trial on the lesser charge.
Yesterday the court heard that he asked a nurse if anything could be done to hasten the process of dying.
Hours later his mother was dead and a "cocktail" of drugs in a syringe - programmed for release over 24 hours - was found empty.
The court heard that his 77-year-old mother was in a rest home and in the final stages of stomach cancer.
On the day she died, in February, the man and his two sisters saw her in a distressed state in which she cried out for help and thrashed about in bed.
Rest-home nurse Janet Lester said that after this incident, the accused asked her what could be done to "make it quick and hurry her death along".
"I said I understood how he felt, but unfortunately it was illegal and something we could not do," she told the court.
At 1pm, Mrs Lester discovered the empty syringe, and the patient died at 2.25pm.
After the death, the accused man had admitted giving his mother a large mixture of drugs in a syringe.
But Mrs Lester said she told him that his actions were probably not going to kill his mother, because in her opinion 20mg of morphine was not enough to make somebody die.
Mrs Lester also said that she had earlier been in the room when the man had discussed pain relief with his mother.
He had told his mother he was against morphine because of the effect it had on his father.
Defence lawyer Roger Laybourn asked Mrs Lester whether she had any reason to doubt the man's concern for his mother's pain or his devotion to her. "Absolutely not," she said.
Palliative care expert Dr Alan Farnell, of Waikato Hospital's department of oncology, said the woman's situation on the day of her death was dreadful and regrettable.
Mr Laybourn said the evidence showed the woman was "throwing her arms about, thrashing about, moving her head from side to side, calling out, 'Help me, help me', for between 45 minutes and an hour".
Crown prosecutor Jacinder Foster asked Mrs Lester about the process of getting a new prescription to increase the amount of morphine being given to the woman.
After consulting a local GP, rest-home staff phoned the palliative care team at Waikato Hospital, she said.
The medication was increased by a factor of five.
At 10am new drugs were loaded into a syringe driven by a battery-charged pump and programmed for release over 24 hours.
Dr Farnell said morphine levels found in the woman's stomach and liver were higher than expected.
He therefore concluded that this had affected the timing of the death.
Mrs Lester told the court she asked the accused man if he had given his mother the full dose from the syringe, and he admitted that he had.
She then told the police and a doctor.
MORPHINE
* Morphine comes from the juice secreted by opium poppies.
* It is one of the most effective drugs for the relief of severe pain.
* A dangerous side-effect is respiratory depression. With higher doses or in frail patients, the respiratory rate decreases and the patient becomes increasingly sedated.
