had surgery a week before and had been on `` morphine around the clock . She 'd had kidney failure . She 'd had liver failure . '' She also had developed sepsis , or blood poisoning , he said . Burgess was being treated for advanced uterine cancer and kidney failure , according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune . Dr. Ewing Cook told the New York Times that he asked a nurse to increase Burgess ' morphine and give her `` enough until she goes . '' `` If you do n't think that by giving a person a lot of morphine , you 're not prematurely sending them to their grave , then you 're a very naive doctor , '' Cook told the Times . `` We kill 'em . '' On Burgess , he said , `` I gave her medicine so I could get rid of her faster , get the nurses off the floor . '' He added , `` There 's no question I hastened her demise . '' In response to a Times-Picayune report in September , Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro Jr. said he planned to look into the deaths
-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- After reviewing the case of a woman who died at New Orleans , Louisiana 's Memorial Hospital in the days after Hurricane Katrina , coroner Frank Minyard said Thursday that he can not classify her death as a homicide . Minyard said he hopes his findings on the death of Jannie Burgess , 79 , will mark `` the end of the Memorial Hospital hurricane situation . '' The review was initiated after an August 2009 New York Times article quoted a doctor as saying Memorial patients were given morphine and other drugs after Katrina struck in August 2005 , with hospital staff knowing that it could hasten some of the patients ' deaths . Burgess ' manner of death is unclassified , the coroner said , and the cause of her death undetermined . `` I do n't think -- and I could be wrong -- I do n't think the morphine contributed as much to her demise as her physical condition , '' said Minyard , who 's served as the coroner of Orleans Parish since 1974 . `` This patient was extremely sick , '' Minyard said of Burgess . The woman had