This is not exactly unexpected.
From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday unanimously struck down the state’s assisted-suicide law, finding it violates the free speech clauses of the Georgia and U.S. Constitutions.
The court’s ruling means that four members of the Final Exit Network do not have to stand trial on felony charges in Forsyth County. They were charged in connection with the 2008 suicide of 58-year-old John Celmer, who killed himself two years after he had been diagnosed with cancer.
At least in the short term, this is a victory for the Final Exit Network. But it’s not an exoneration.
What the court decision really includes is a harsh condemnation of the Georgia legislators for putting together a sloppy half-assed statute covering assisted suicide.:
Justice Hugh Thompson, writing for the court Monday, noted that the law only criminalizes those assisted suicides that include a public advertisement or offer to assist. Many assisted suicides are either not prohibited or expressly exempted, and the law does not render illegal all advertisements or offers to assist in a suicide, he added.
“Had the state truly been interested in the preservation of human life … it could have imposed a ban on all assisted suicides with no restriction on protected speech whatsoever,” the ruling said. “Alternatively, the state could have sought to prohibit all offers to assist in suicide when accompanied by an overt act to accomplish that goal. The state here did neither.” (Emphasis added.)
That’s what the legislators could have done. It really looks like they didn’t care much if family members and friends were helping the suicides of elderly, ill and disabled folks (they’re expensive, after all). They just didn’t want a Kevorkian causing a scene in their state.
More on this later. Right now, Georgia legislators have a choice. They can draft a law that proves they believe that all suicides are preventable tragedies. Or they can just let the open season on despairing people contemplating suicide stand.
I’m not making any bets on which way they’ll go. –Stephen Drake
ADDENDUM: A key issue was that the statute was found to violate free speech rights by criminalizing any advertisement or offer to assist in suicides. The court actually spelled out what legislators could have done and could still do to criminalize assisted suicide in a way that would pass constitutional muster.
Court decision is here (in pdf). h/t to Sam Bagenstos at Disability Law.