Man released from jail after mercy killing

RIVERHEAD, N.Y. (WABC) -- A man on Long Island who killed his ailing mother last year has been released from jail.

Juan Gonzalez says he smothered his mom in a mercy killing.

"Yes, I'm sorry for everything," said Juan Gonzalez, convicted for killing his mother.

It looks as if 70-year-old Juan Gonzalez is carrying the world on his shoulders.

After spending six months in jail, charged with suffocating his ailing 98-year-old mother, Gonzalez walked free Tuesday.

"You want justice and sometimes it has to be tempered with mercy and in this case on these specific facts I believe that we tempered justice with mercy," said Glenn Kurtzrock, prosecutor.

It was last May.

Gonzalez was living in Brentwood with his deaf, blind, bedridden mother Teresa Aestete.

Gonzalez also had a host of health problems and believed he was dying.

Prosecutors say he put a plastic bag over his mother's head and then tried to kill himself by overdosing on his insulin medication.

"He did everything for his mother. He bathed her. He clothed her. He fed her There's no malice here. The motivation was really to put his mother and himself out of pain and misery," said Michael Brown, defense attorney.

"He indicated and we believe him that he loved her very, very much," said Thomas Spota, Suffolk County District Attorney.

Gonzalez is now in need of a double kidney transplant as a result of his insulin overdose.

He'll live with his daughter.

She was in court but hid her face from the cameras.

For Gonzalez, there was also very little to say.

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