Two recent cases show what it takes to screw up a “mercy killing” defense

crime and punishment, homicide, Homicide / 'Mercy Killing', murder, Our News & Commentary Blog

As anyone who follows the news of old, ill, and disabled people who get killed by family members or “caregivers,” it’s all to clear that if the perpetrator claims the act was a “mercy killing,” it’s frequently a successful defense strategy.  The public tends to believe that the victim would have wanted to die, even if they didn’t leave any word behind to say that they wanted to be:

  • smothered with a pillow;
  • shot in the head;
  • given a medication overdose;

or any other highly effective means that family members and “caregivers” have used to kill family members/friends/clients who are old, ill or disabled.

On June 16th, two stories of killers whose “mercy killing” defenses failed came through my news feed.  They are instructive.  They give a pretty good idea as to just what it takes to nullify a “mercy killing” defense. 

The first comes from the Newcastle Herald in Australia:

A CARER who tried to murder his vulnerable and defenceless patient in the middle of the night was jailed for a maximum of eight years yesterday after the judge said it was “far removed from any idea of a mercy killing”.

Steven James McLaren, 55, will serve a non-parole period of five years after he told Newcastle District Court that he felt trapped and was “at the end of my tether” caring for Barry Harrison, 61, who suffered from motor neurone disease.

Mr Harrison had only some movement of his head and eyes with McLaren describing him as “more or less a quadriplegic”.

McLaren moved in to Mr Harrison’s Eleebana home in March 2010, Judge Berman said.

McLaren went into Mr Harrison’s bedroom about 2am on October 5, 2010, and adjusted Mr Harrison’s bed so Mr Harrison was lying horizontally, which would lead to him choking and dying.

McLaren, who previously pleaded guilty to attempted murder, said he expected Mr Harrison to die quickly and it would look like a natural death.

Instead, Mr Harrison woke, screamed for help and managed to survive for about six hours before a nurse found him on the floor.

The lesson here is, of course, you can’t claim that you acted out of mercy if your victim survives and accuses you of trying to murder him.

The second story comes from The Dispatch (Ocean City, MD).  The case involved a 58-year-old man accused of killing his 85-year-old mother:

SNOW HILL — After delivering a 30-minute dissertation on how much he cared for his late elderly mother and how much money he spent on that care, a Pennsylvania man last Friday was sentenced to 25 years in prison for repeatedly running her over on a rural road in northern Worcester County last August.

 More…

From the beginning, Steven Molin did not deny running over his mother as many as three times, but claimed the incident was an accident, caused in part by a faulty passenger side door on the 2008 Chevy work truck damaged in a different accident earlier in the day. However, a Worcester County Sheriff’s Office accident reconstructionist, after reviewing the physical evidence and interviewing Molin, determined the victim had been run over three times despite ample opportunity for the suspect to avoid hitting her after the first collision.

The takeaway here is that you’d better claim it was a “mercy killing” from the outset.  Claiming the death was an “accident” and changing over to the “mercy killing” defense doesn’t work – especially when a car is the murder weapon.

Of course, these cases are fairly unusual, most homicides defended as acts of mercy, the accused are careful to make sure the victim actually died (obviously, hence the use of “homicide” here).  Additionally, most perpetrators avoid using knives or blunt force, preferring guns, suffocation and medication overdoses.  Making a token attempt on one’s own life also helps with defense.

Sheesh.  No wonder so many people get away with murders of this type.  You have to be a special kind of stupid to screw it up as in the two cases linked above.  No less guilty or malicious than the “successful” killers, just a lot less intelligent.  –Stephen Drake 

American Medical News – “Kevorkian leaves mixed legacy” (NDY Quoted)

American Medical News, assisted suicide, bioethics, disabilities, Kevorkian, Our News & Commentary Blog, stephen drake, Timothy Quill

Since I was interviewed for this article in American Medical News, I was actively looking for its appearance online this morning.  The interview with the reporter lasted almost 45 minutes and covered a lot of ground, most of which didn’t get included in this relatively short article.  It is an attempt to explore the “legacy” that Kevorkian left us.

Below are come excerpts from the article Dr. Kevorkian leaves mixed legacy by Carolyne Krupa:

The death of pathologist Jack Kevorkian, MD, left many pondering the long-term influence of a highly controversial figure and what role he may have played in transforming the nation’s perception of dying.

Some think his aggressive push for physician-assisted suicide forced the medical profession to take a closer look at care of the terminally ill. But others say Dr. Kevorkian lacked a sense of proper medical ethics and that his actions were motivated more by a desire to advance his agenda than compassion for patients.

There were four “experts” interviewed – and I am one of the four.  The other were Michael Paletta, MD, “vice president of medical affairs for Hospice of Michigan and executive director of the hospice’s Maggie Allesee Center for Quality of Life;” Peg Sandeen, Executive Director of Death With Dignity National Center, one of the two largest assisted suicide advocacy organizations in the US; and Timothy E. Quill, MD, who is described as “a professor of medicine, psychiatry and medical humanities at the University of Rochester (N.Y.) School of Medicine and Dentistry” and also as someone who “supports physician-assisted death only as a last resort.” (more on this at the end of the blog entry)

Here’s the part from me, with some comments and clarification:

Dr. Kevorkian was particularly harmful to people with disabilities, said Stephen Drake, a research analyst with Not Dead Yet. The Rochester, N.Y.-based organization opposes legalized assisted suicide and was founded in 1996 in response to Dr. Kevorkian’s acquittal in the assisted suicides of two women with nonterminal conditions.

Dr. Kevorkian’s image has been sanitized by the media, which painted him largely as a hero to the suffering, Drake said. Many ignore that before he became famous, Dr. Kevorkian wrote extensively about his desire to allow human experimentation, he said.

Another concern is that Dr. Kevorkian and the media never looked at the social factors around the people whose suicides he assisted, Drake said. Other factors, such as marital or mobility problems, may have contributed to their desperation and helplessness, he added.

Ignoring those social factors demonstrates some of society’s prejudices to assume that simply having a disability would be cause enough to want to die, without looking more in-depth at the individual’s personal troubles, Drake said.

For the record – I never refer to Jack Kevorkian as “Dr.”

Readers of this blog will know that the comment about Kevorkian’s advocacy of human experimentation is incomplete.  His agenda was always to use “planned death” (execution, infanticide, assisted suicide, etc.) as an opportunity to keep someone alive and sedated for a few hours or days while experimenting on them, followed by organ harvesting.  His assisted suicide activities were part of that agenda.

Likewise, when “mobility” is mentioned as a social problem, I wasn’t talking about the impact of the mobility impairment itself, but the frustration, anger and despair that was a factor in at least one person who went to Kevorkian who waited endless months for a proper wheelchair – which finally arrived a few days after his death at Kevorkian’s hands.

Also, Kevorkian’s acquittal wasn’t the only catalyst for the formation of NDY.  There were also two court cases going to the Supreme Court arguing for a constitutional right to assisted suicide.  One of those cases was Vacco v. Quill – that’s the same “Quill” who is one of the “experts” interviewed for the article.

Quill’s limited indentification in terms of his relevance to the story is a problem in this article and how he is often identified in the press.  Quill doe not just “support” assisted suicide, he is a leading advocate of legalization and has been one since 1991. The summary of his efforts put toward legalization are summarized neatly on the Death With Dignity National Center website, where he is on the board of directors for both the organization and its Political Action Committee:

Quill has lectured widely and published numerous articles, including a 1991 New England Journal of Medicine article about “Diane,” a dying patient who requested assistance in dying. Quill is the author of four books, Physician Assisted Dying: The Case for Palliative Care and Patient Choice (Johns Hopkins University Press, co-edited with Margaret Battin), Caring for Patients at the End of Life: Facing an Uncertain Future Together (Oxford University Press), A Midwife Through the Dying Process, Stories of Healing and Hard Choices at the End of Life (Johns Hopkins University Press), and Death and Dignity: Making Choices and Taking Charge (W.W. Norton). He was the lead physician plaintiff in the New York State legal case challenging the law prohibiting physician aid in dying—Quill v. Vacco.

This also means that two out of the four sources used for this article are essentially both representatives of Death With Dignity National Center.  As I mentioned before, Quill is often described this way in assisted suicide articles and it is dishonest.  In an article about assisted suicide, someone who is a prominent political advocate of legalization should be identified that way.

If Tim Quill were really ethical, he would insist on being identified that way so that readers would be better able to evaluate his comments in relation to his position as a stakeholder in the debate.  –Stephen Drake

The American Muslim (publication) – “Euthanasia: a Modest Proposal” by Rev. Frank Julian Gelli

assisted suicide, dignitas, euthanasia, modest proposal, Our News & Commentary Blog, Rev. Frank Julian Gelli, satire, soylent green, Terry Pratchett, The American Muslim

It’s been a long couple of weeks.  The month started with the death of Jack Kevorkian and a nonstop barrage of eulogizing and mythologizing his life.  This week, we had the sorry spectacle of Terry Pratchett’s “infomercial” on assisted suicide featuring the spectacle of another rich disabled man drinking some poison and dying on camera.

It all gets old very fast.

I was on the lookout for something a little different.  I’m a little tired right now to thumb my own nose at the promoters of assisted suicide and euthanasia – and to have it come off convincingly.

So, instead, I found someone who is thumbing his nose at them and sharing his message with you.  It was just what I needed this Friday.

From The American Muslim, here are the first paragraphs to Euthanasia: a Modest Proposal by Rev. Frank Julian Gelli:

It is in the air. Eu and Thanatos. Two Greek words, meaning a ‘good death’.

Sir Terry Pratchett, science fiction novelist and Alzheimer sufferer, made a documentary about ‘assisted dying’. The aim: to make euthanasia legal in Britain. Sir Terry’s wife is not in favour, apparently, but he is. Golly! Verily, the Book of Proverbs is right, ‘a good wife is worth more than rubies’. I confess: If I had a wife, I would like her to be like Mrs Pratchett.

Euthanasia-talk is topical indeed. Elderly people in British care homes are victims of spending cuts. The quality of their care is deteriorating. Privatisation has resulted in falling standards. The financial crisis bites. State support is short. It can’t go on like this. And so on.

Good death fans of course swear up and down that it is voluntary euthanasia they are proposing. No one would be forced to top himself. Fair enough, conceptually. Still, when I was a parish priest I have dealt long enough in funerals and bereavements to be perhaps a wee bit sceptical of the happy concept. Where there is will, there is a way. Geddit?

That, however, you can argue, is carping. We must take the bull by the horns. Tackle the problem at the roots. Enough of pussyfooting. Time has time to be truly radical.

In 1729 the Irish writer Jonathan Swift published his pamphlet, A Modest Proposal for Preventing Children of Poor People in Ireland from being a Burden to the People or Parents…’etcetera. Simply put, Swift suggested that the large, excess child population of Ireland should be eaten. A one year old’s flesh was most delicious, nourishing and wholesome food, the great man averred.

It was a brilliant, stupendous idea. Because it bypassed the matter of the child’s voluntary submission to his lot. At the age of one, children are not capable of consent, so the matter of their agreeing to being eaten could not arise. It was ideal, moral, socially useful cannibalism.  Swift was a genius.

So am I. A genius-like priest.  Immodestly, I propose something similar. Let us eat the old folks. It not fair they should feel useless cast-offs. Their dignity demands they should have a use. As food. Let us eat them.

You can see where this is going, of course.  The good Rev. has done a nice job with this one, although I’d argue it would be a little stronger without the last paragraph.  But that’s a matter of taste more than anything.

If you’re in the mood to read something that treats Terry Pratchett and his fellow euthanasia enthusiasts with the appropriate amount of (dis)respect, please read the rest of Rev. Gelli’s essay here.

It was a great read for a Friday and getting in a better mood for the weekend.  –Stephen Drake

Yesterday’s Joke Becoming Today’s Reality – Death Row and Assisted Suicide

assisted suicide, crime and punishment, death penalty, Our News & Commentary Blog, reality check, satire, slippery slope

Back on April 1, 1998 I sent out an obviously bogus press release from an email address I reserved for just such purposes.  It was an attempt at some (I thought) outrageous satire, taking pro-assisted suicide arguments based on “quality of life” to one of their many logical conclusions.  What would happen, I wondered, when civil libertarians opposed to the death penalty found that position in conflict with their support of assisted suicide.  I didn’t doubt for a minute which would win out.

Here’s my fiction from 13 years ago:

Los Angeles – April 1, 1998
Affiliated Press

    At a press conference today, the American Civil Liberties Union Announced
it would be supporting the request of a death row prisoner to obtain assisted
suicide.  Sid Nasty, who has been on death row for 5 years awaiting the outcome
of appeals in his death sentence in the slaying of 5 girl scouts, has applied
for assistance in committing suicide.
   Nasty, in an appeal filed yesterday, contends that his present quality of
life is unacceptable and seeks to voluntarily end his “suffering” and
“meaningless existence”.  Nasty says that even if his death sentence is
commuted, the best he can hope for is a life sentence with no hope for parole.
   Nasty, in a taped presentation, explained: “Hell, I figure the ACLU has
helped cripples in nursing homes to escape being locked up with no hope of
parole.  Why should they get the right to die and I don’t?  The food may be a
little better in here than in a nursing home, but aside from that, it’s pretty
much the same”.
   This action of the ACLU stands in stark contrast to its actions in the case
of Gary Gilmore, who asked that all appeals on his behalf be withdrawn so he
could be executed by a firing squad.  The ACLU argued that Gilmore was
depressed by the circumstances of his incarceration and could not be making an
informed choice in the matter.  ACLU spokesperson Sol Phistry explained that
the ACLU was firm in opposing the death penalty then and now.
   “Nasty’s appeals for a commutation of sentence will stay in place.  Gillmore
was asking for the state to execute him.  Nasty is asking the state to allow
him to release himself from an untenable existence.  He will be administering
the lethal injection to himself, not some flunkie hired by the prison.  This is
about choice.
   “Jack Kevorkian, a pioneer in the right to die, said it best; to paraphrase
him: “The voluntary self-elimination of murderers, rapists and other felons,
taken collectively can only serve to enhance the public health and welfare.” (emphasis added.)

Who says I don’t have a whimsical side?

One one of the email lists this got posted two, an ACLU board member (don’t remember if it was a state or the national board) commented that the author had an “overactive imagination.”

Well, here’s today’s news – from the state of Oregon.  In fact, it’s from Portland Tribune reporter Peter Korn – the same reporter and same paper that exposed the Oregon Board of Nursing as a sham – that consistently protected the jobs and licenses of nurses over the health and welfare of patients.

This latest story is titled Three Needles.  Six Minutes.  The End.

Excerpt:

T. Allen Bethel has met his exception. A gentle and thoughtful man, Bethel is senior pastor of Maranatha Church in Northeast Portland. He and other Portland-area clergy are well aware that on Aug. 16 the state Department of Corrections is scheduled to put convicted killer Gary Haugen to death in the first Oregon state execution in 14 years.
Most members of the local faith community who take up the highly charged issue these days speak out against the death penalty, though there are certainly clergy on both sides.
Proponents and opponents know that the issue is framed differently here because Oregon is also home to physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients.
Physician-assisted suicide essentially allows individuals to say they would rather die than live in circumstances they cannot bear. Haugen went to Marion County Circuit Court to ask that he be put to death rather than live out his life in the Oregon State Penitentiary.
When he considers those two ideas, Bethel, a staunch opponent of capital punishment, says maybe Haugen should get his wish.
“My belief is, I would fight for his life,” Bethel says. “But each of us has the right to say what I want or do not want done with my body.”
Oregon’s lethal injection execution system uses three sterilized needles and takes about six minutes for the combination of drugs to kill the prisoner. The state has used the lethal injection method since Oregon’s capital punishment was reinstated in 1984. Prior to that, Oregon executed prisoners for many years in a gas chamber.

There’s more from another member of the clergy that goes farther:

…the Rev. Lynne Smouse Lopéz, pastor at Ainsworth United Church of Christ in Alameda, says she’s pretty sure most of her congregation are against it. As for her personal view, Lopéz says, “I’ve always been against the death penalty and always will be, I’m sure.”

Lopéz believes that everyone is redeemable and that putting someone to death denies that possibility.
“What I have to believe is that everybody has good in them,” Lopéz says. “We are created in the image of God. …We can be broken, but I also believe we can be healed and be made whole. Some people maybe have to be kept away from society to protect themselves and others, but I just cannot give up on them as human beings.”
As for Haugen asking for his own execution, Lopéz admits to equivocation.
“I’d rather we then say, ‘It’s OK if he wants physician-assisted suicide, but not put to death in an execution.’ ” (emphasis added.)

OK – so this isn’t about the ACLU, but about members of the clergy in Oregon.  To be fair, there is a spread of opinion in that community reflected in the article.  But in the two I’ve highlighted – especially in the case of  Rev. Lopéz – the logic in terms of being OK with the wish to die based on a “quality of life” argument is virtually identical to my April Fools press release from 1998.

Come to think of it, I haven’t heard of the ACLU filing in opposition to a prisoner who wanted appeals to their execution stopped.

It makes sense – we have a group of people that are shunned, devalued, and increasing numbers of taxpayers see as an unnecessary drain on public resources.  Only this time, we’re talking about death row prisoners instead of old, ill and disabled people.  I can see people becoming more comfortable with this idea, just as seems to be the case with applauding and encouraging the suicides of old, ill and disabled people.

I’d better be careful when I write phony “outrageous” press releases in the future.  Or at least redefine what “outrageous” means to me.  –Stephen Drake

UK – Dominic Lawson: Why the disabled fear assisted suicide

assisted suicide, disabled people, media coverage, op-ed, Our News & Commentary Blog, research, United Kingdom

The following are excerpts from an excellent piece by columnist Dominic Lawson.  He arranged to visit SCOPE, the UK disability charity that published the results of a survey earlier this year, finding that 70% of disabled respondents expressed concerns about their own safety if assisted suicide was legalized in the UK.

Lawson was allowed to watch and listen to a focus group – one of many SCOPE is conducting to get more qualitative data – through a one-way glass.  From comments Lawson makes in his column, I’m assuming that group participants were informed of his observation, although I’d like it stated a little more clearly.

The following are excerpts from Lawson’s column in the June 14th edition of The Independent.  It’s titled Why the disabled fear assisted suicide:

Last month Scope released one of the results, a poll by ComRes, which revealed that no fewer than 70 per cent of disabled people are concerned that the changes in the law advocated by Pratchett would create pressure on vulnerable patients to “end their lives prematurely”. Scope has also been conducting focus groups of people with cerebral palsy, in order to add qualitative research to the quantitative findings of pollsters; the charity invited me to attend one of these encounters, and to observe many hours of such discussions from behind one-way glass alongside a group of its full-time employees.

The bulk of the column is devoted to stories about threats already being encountered, fear of an uncertain future and even fear of one’s own family.  The following is almost at the end of Lawson’s column:

The opinions expressed by “Bill” and Andy had a striking effect on Valerie Lang, a 71-year-old from Islington in north London. Valerie admitted that her mind had been “substantially changed” by what she had heard. At the end of the meeting she said: “I know there will come a time when my body won’t have given out, but my patience jolly well will; and I will want to go to Dignitas when that happens. But I have been reminded of how vulnerable people, less strong-minded than me, can be open to suggestion.” 
Valerie had told the group earlier that she had spent 20 years “falling in and out of depression” until therapy had enabled her to come to terms with her cerebral palsy. Since then she had had a remarkable life, despite her severe disability: she had become a senior research officer in the Civil Aviation Authority’s Economics Division and since her retirement had, as she put it, “sat on many committees, but have now reduced these to about six”. It is easy to see how under a system of legalised assisted suicide, Valerie’s earlier years of depression at her condition might well have been ended; and as Richard Hawkes points out, “the thing about suicide is that it doesn’t allow for second thoughts”. 
Something else Valerie said at the meeting struck me as dreadfully sad: “When I was younger, if I fell over in the street two or three people would always rush to pick me up. Now people just walk past. I am no longer even part of the scenery.” 

That is the state of mind, on both sides, in which assisted suicide for the severely physically disabled could so insidiously turn from being a liberating option into something more like an oppressive social obligation.

The only thing I’ll add here is that the way that Valerie gets ignored when she falls over in the street these strikes me as more than “sad.”  It strikes me as one more symptom of a (nondisabled) population that view us with disdain, scorn and even resentment.

Please read the rest for yourself by clicking here.  –Stephen Drake