***SPOILERS*** One of if not the first film out of Hollywood that tackles the subject of mercy killings that has honorable and straight laced, in going by the book, Judge Calvin Cooker, Fredic March,come to realize that there are extenuating circumstances in cases that he presides on that is not explained in the law that he's sworn to upholds. This comes crashing down on his head when his wife Catherine, Florence Eldridge, is diagnosed with a fatal brain disease that will slowly end her life, with her brain turning into mush, in excoriating pain. It's later in the movie when the Judge can't take it, his wife's suffering, anymore that in a fit of madness drives his car with his wife Catherine in it off the road where she ends up dead and him suffering severe head shoulder & leg injuries!
Even though exonerated in Catherine's dead Judge Cook feels that he in fact murdered her and wants to pay for his crime even if it meant life imprisonment or worse. Having attorney David "Double D" Douglas, Edmond O'Brien, given the job to defend Judge Cook , who refused to defend himself, it's decided the only defense for his action is an insanity defense in that he wasn't in his right mind at the time of the crime that he's not only accused of but admitted to! It takes a lot of work on "Bouble D's" part to not only convince the judge & jury but himself as well to Judge Cook's innocence. In that the man, Judge Cook, was out of his mind at the time of his wife's death but it wasn't him that killed her! It turned out that Catherine herself was the one who did herself in before her husband Judge Cook had the chance to do it!
***SPOILERS*** It was Catherine who found out the truth of her fatal illness in going through her husbands papers and knowing what she's in store for, a slow and painful death, that she decided to put herself, in taking a bottle of powerful pain killers, out of her misery. In an autopsy preformed on her on the insistence of Judge Cook's attorney David "Double D" Douglas reviled that Catherine was in fact dead before the car that her husband drove off the road hit the bottom of the gully that it landed in! The ending of the film was a bit of a cop-out in having Judge Cook not going through with his planned mercy killing of his terminally ill wife. But with the movie released in 1948 him really going through with it and being found innocent was totally unthinkable at the time by the movie going public.
In fact there was an even more poignant moment in the film a bit earlier when a man's best friend, his dog, was hit by a car and was, as his owner was in tears, mercifully shot and killed by a policeman at the scene. It was that tragic incident that gave Judge Cook the idea to do the same thing, in a car crash, to his wife to keep her from going through the same kind of suffering that the fatally injured canine was going through!
Even though exonerated in Catherine's dead Judge Cook feels that he in fact murdered her and wants to pay for his crime even if it meant life imprisonment or worse. Having attorney David "Double D" Douglas, Edmond O'Brien, given the job to defend Judge Cook , who refused to defend himself, it's decided the only defense for his action is an insanity defense in that he wasn't in his right mind at the time of the crime that he's not only accused of but admitted to! It takes a lot of work on "Bouble D's" part to not only convince the judge & jury but himself as well to Judge Cook's innocence. In that the man, Judge Cook, was out of his mind at the time of his wife's death but it wasn't him that killed her! It turned out that Catherine herself was the one who did herself in before her husband Judge Cook had the chance to do it!
***SPOILERS*** It was Catherine who found out the truth of her fatal illness in going through her husbands papers and knowing what she's in store for, a slow and painful death, that she decided to put herself, in taking a bottle of powerful pain killers, out of her misery. In an autopsy preformed on her on the insistence of Judge Cook's attorney David "Double D" Douglas reviled that Catherine was in fact dead before the car that her husband drove off the road hit the bottom of the gully that it landed in! The ending of the film was a bit of a cop-out in having Judge Cook not going through with his planned mercy killing of his terminally ill wife. But with the movie released in 1948 him really going through with it and being found innocent was totally unthinkable at the time by the movie going public.
In fact there was an even more poignant moment in the film a bit earlier when a man's best friend, his dog, was hit by a car and was, as his owner was in tears, mercifully shot and killed by a policeman at the scene. It was that tragic incident that gave Judge Cook the idea to do the same thing, in a car crash, to his wife to keep her from going through the same kind of suffering that the fatally injured canine was going through!