Killing off the dying?

Public Interest, Spring, 1998 by Adam Wolfson

She wipes an eye with a finger.

"Self-delivered and ..."

"No, simpler, simpler than that."

"I don't know." She looks confused and turns to her husband.

"Can you help me?"

Few of his other assisted suicides, many of them described in The Suicide Machine, published by the Detroit Free Press staff, were any less morally ambiguous than the first. On February 15, 1993, Kevorkian killed emphysema-sufferer Hugh Gale - victim number 13 - by placing a plastic mask over his nose and mouth and poisoning him with carbon monoxide. Found in Kevorkian's garbage was a typed description of Gale's death, signed by Kevorkian, which indicated that twice during the procedure Gale had demanded, "Take it off!" Kevorkian killed Rebecca Badger - victim number 33 - on July 9, 1996 by lethal injection. She had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis; however, no sign of the disease was found upon autopsy. Lisa Lansing - victim number 46 - was also killed by a Kevorkian lethal injection, on February 2, 1997. According to her doctors in New Jersey, she suffered from no identifiable disease.

What the public thinks

I have spent some time describing the man and his vision not because I expect to expose his activities to an unknowing public and thereby to put a stop to him. It's too late for that: Kevorkian has addressed the National Press Club; he has appeared on the cover of Time; he has been a guest on several popular television shows, including NBC's "Dateline" and "60 Minutes"; he has written a remarkably candid autobiography. It's safe to say that most Americans have heard of Kevorkian and know what he does for a living, even if they don't know of his larger ambitions. My intention is more modest: It is simply to place the reaction of the residents of Michigan to Kevorkian in context. How did they, along with their elected officials and the legal community, respond to a man who kills with abandon? Who kills with as much political intent as the Unabomber or Timothy J. McVeigh? Who kills to further his agenda of human experimentation?

Here's the response in brief: In December of 1990, Kevorkian was charged with murdering Janet Adkins, but a local judge dismissed the charges. A few years later, Kevorkian was again charged with murder and again a judge dismissed the charges, praising Kevorkian for bringing "to the world's attention the need to give this topic paramount concern." In December 1992, Governor John Engler signed a bill that temporarily banned assisted suicide in the state, and, in December 1994, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled against a right to assisted suicide - but Kevorkian went on killing nonetheless. On three separate occasions, Kevorkian was tried for murder before a jury, and each time acquitted - in the second trial when the not-guilty verdict was read by the jury foreman (a United Methodist clergyman!), spectators in the courtroom applauded. Richard Thompson, the Republican prosecutor who doggedly pursued Kevorkian, was defeated in his bid for reelection in 1996, in no small part as thanks for his efforts to jail Kevorkian. Though the U.S. Supreme Court that same year upheld a judge's injunction prohibiting Kevorkian from assisting in any additional suicides, the newly elected prosecutor announced that he would not try to enforce the ban.