AllMovie

Though based on a true story which occurred in 1985, the made-for-TV Mercy or Murder? bears traces of the 1947 Fredric March film An Act of Murder. Robert Young stars as Roswell Gilbert, a 75-year-old Florida retiree happily married for 45 years. Gilbert's wife (Frances Reid) falls victim to Alzheimer's disease, which transforms their blissful existence into a six-year ordeal of unrelieved misery. Gilbert is eventually moved to murder his wife and end her suffering. He is tried for murder, and sent to prison chiefly because he refuses to apologize for what he has done. The performances of Robert Young and Frances Reid compensate for the windier, preachier passages of Mercy or Murder?