On October 27, Vernal `Bob' Ohlrich, 76, allegedly fired a slug from a 0.22-caliber pistol into the side of his wife's head as she lingered near death in a hospital in the nearby town of Hebron.

The gunshot ended 74-year-old Phyllis Ohlrich's battle with colon cancer and started her husband's own struggle with the legal system.

Ohlrich was released on a 35,000-dollar bond to live with a son. His trial is scheduled to begin on February 8.

The prosecuting attorney, Dan Werner, has said he will not seek the death penalty, but he has charged Ohlrich with first-degree murder. Conviction would require a life prison sentence. Townspeople in this south-central Nebraska farming community of 892 say the Ohlrichs were devoted to each other. They had been married 56 years. During his wife's illness and frequenthospital stays, Ohlrich faithfully spent all day, everyday at her side. Their four children say the family considers the killing Ohlrich's attempt to be humane to a suffering spouse.

Phyllis Ohlrich was being treated for pain and had been incoherent for some time because of medication. Twice in the month before her death, doctors called the family to her bedside because they thought she would not live through the night.

Two weeks before she was killed, she told a neighbour: ``I just wish I could die. I'm ready to go.''

This personal crisis suddenly triggered a new public debate from coffee shops to newspaper columns about assisted suicide and mercy killings.

The debate is likely to grow more intense on Sunday when the CBS television network is to air a videotape showing Jack Kevorkian, Michigan's euthanasia advocate, administering a lethal injection to a terminally ill patient at the latter's request. The Hemlock Society of Nebraska said Ohlrich's killing could have been avoided if state law hadallowed physician-assisted suicide.

Reverend Frederick Felger of Omaha, president of the Nebraska chapter of the society, said Phyllis Ohlrich's death was like a sacrifice from Biblical times, ``not to appease any gods but to deliver her from what a doctor could not -- hours and months of cancerous pain.''

Dr Scott McPherson of Lincoln, President of the Nebraska Coalition for Compassionate Care, said legally sanctioned euthanasia and assisted suicide would lead to the killing of terminally ill patients rather than providing them with the comfort and love they deserve.

McPherson said he feared that the Ohlrich family's tragedy could create sympathy for assisted suicide and euthanasia. The case came at the same time that one of Omaha's largest hospitals announced that financial troubles were forcing the closing of a centre established to help families caring for terminally ill relatives. ``It is the predicament of the dying: They produce little revenue,'' said Ruth Muchemore, a registered nurse inOmaha.

At Phyllis Ohlrich's funeral, the Rev Duane Fahr said the killing was against God's will. ``We have no right to take a human life that God has placed upon this earth,'' he noted.

Prosecutor Werner rejects the notion that Ohlrich's case can be dismissed as a mercy killing. ``I question whether there is any legal basis for that and whether that, in fact, is not a contradiction in terms,'' he said. ``Is any killing merciful?'

Publicity about Ohlrich's case has generated letters and donations of money from across the country, his lawyer said.