An interesting op ed appeared in the Times of Trenton late last month, comparing death penalty and assisted suicide laws. H. John Witman III is a retired attorney who practiced for nearly 20 years in the New Jersey Division of Criminal Justice. He is a member of the board of directors of the Progressive Center for Independent Living, one of the New Jersey disability organizations that opposes the pending assisted suicide bill. But his reasoning is not what we typically see. Excerpts follow below:
The unlikely alliance in opposition to the New Jersey bill — disability rights advocates, faith-based organizations and medical professionals — itself signals that something is fundamentally wrong with assisted suicide laws. I offer a practical assessment that, whether or not assisted suicide is ethically or morally right, whether or not its intentions are good, assisted suicide cannot work. It cannot work, just as the death penalty could not work.
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The death penalty is a relevant analogy. Assisted suicide is like the death penalty, because the state would prescribe a scheme by which a life can be intentionally and lawfully taken. New Jersey’s death penalty statute provided many layers of protection and review to assure that life would be taken fairly. As a result, in the years between enactment of the death penalty in 1982 and the report of the Death Penalty Study Commission in 2007, the New Jersey Supreme Court had overturned 57 of 60 death sentences and the remaining three were under appeal. The Legislature abolished the death penalty in 2007, on recommendation of the commission.
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Beyond the burdens of fair and workable administration, there is a feature that no protection, no procedure, indeed, no statute, can touch. Judges who gave statements to the Death Penalty Study Commission implied that, ultimately, even some of the death penalty decisions were arbitrary or subjective. The decision to take one’s own life is as private and, perhaps, as subjective a decision as can be made.
The state can never know what subtle coercions make one choose to take one’s own life, or worse, cause one to decide that another’s life is not worth living.
John Witman’s entire op ed can be read here.
This op ed takes a different approach in opposing “the lethal prescription” and state sanction of “physician-assisted suicide.”
He is right, of course! There is no way to legislate problem-free Assisted Suicide and problem-free executions.
Additionally, If Assisted Suicide is to be defended as good public policy by the State Legislatures, why then can no physician be present, under these laws, when the “lethal prescription” is taken? Lots of attention given to State Execution of Prisoners where the “lethal injection” and the “lethal medication” didn’t compassionately kill the prisoner, and a physician is PRESENT, as required by state law. Yet, states would sanction “legal prescriptions” with no oversight of a physician and no thought about the so called “good death” under assisted suicide laws that may go wrong. (Ezekial Emanuel talks about this in his Article that opposed Assisted Suicide)