Kevorkian's Nine-Year Euthanasia Crusade Leads to Murder Conviction

By Liz Townsend

After nine years, 130 deaths, and six trials, "Dr. Death" Jack Kevorkian finally faces jail time for killing a desperate man who came to him for "help" and found only death. Thomas Youk's death by lethal injection, administered directly by Kevorkian and nationally televised on 60 Minutes, led to a second-degree murder conviction March 26, but Youk was only one of many people who died to advance Kevorkian's euthanasia crusade.

"We believe the verdict should have been premeditated murder, but we're very elated by the second-degree verdict," said Diane Coleman of the disability-rights group Not Dead Yet, according to the Associated Press. "We want to see Jack Kevorkian imprisoned for life. It's clear he has no respect for people with disabilities."

An Oakland County, Michigan, jury convicted Kevorkian, 70, of second-degree murder and illegal delivery of a controlled substance. It was the first time a jury convicted Kevorkian of charges directly related to a death, and also the first time Kevorkian acted as his own lawyer. Of his four previous assisted suicide trials, three ended in acquittal and one ended in a mistrial. Kevorkian was convicted in November 1998 of minor charges of resisting arrest and obstructing justice when he scuffled with police officers who wanted to question him when he dropped one of his victims off at a hospital. He paid a $900 fine.

The prosecution's case in the latest trial consisted almost solely of a videotape of Kevorkian injecting Youk, who had Lou Gehrig's disease, with lethal drugs on September 17, 1998. The tape was broadcast on the national television show 60 Minutes November 22.

During an interview with Mike Wallace, Kevorkian admitted he wanted prosecutors to put him on trial again. "I've got to force them to act," he said. "They must charge me. Because if they do not, that means they don't think it was a crime."

Prosecutor David Gorcyca, who was elected in 1996 based largely on his promise not to "waste taxpayers' money" on Kevorkian trials when it seemed impossible to get a conviction, could not ignore the clear videotaped evidence of a crime, according to the Detroit Free Press.

"Dr. Kevorkian has even begged and sometimes taunted me into prosecuting him," Gorcyca said after the jury's verdict was announced, the Associated Press reported. "Today a jury of his peers granted him his ultimate wish."

The seven-woman, five-man jury spent 12 1/2 hours deliberating after the trial. Assistant Oakland County Prosecutor Dan Lemisch told the Free Press that the jurors took time deciding between first- and second-degree murder. "They never thought there wasn't a crime," Lemisch said.

Kevorkian is free on a $750,000 bond until his sentencing on April 14. The maximum sentence for second-degree murder is life in prison; the drug-delivery charge could bring up to seven years.

Kevorkian's attorney David Gorosh, who began representing him again when Kevorkian withdrew as his own lawyer while the jury was deliberating, said he will ask the judge for probation, according to the Free Press.

Pro-life and disability-rights groups acknowledged that although this conviction is long overdue, the fight against assisted suicide and the "quality of life" ethic is far from over. "The conviction of Jack Kevorkian should come as a relief to people with disabilities," said Burke Balch, director of NRLC's Department of Medical Ethics. "The danger is great that any so-called 'right to die' would quickly become a 'duty' to die."

"If this had happened sooner, there are 130 people who would still be alive," Not Dead Yet's Coleman told the Detroit News. " [Kevorkian is] a symbol. But when you get right down to it, he's not the scariest part of this. The scariest part is the people who seem a lot more mainstream than he does. Their agenda is the same. They're just more polite."

Some euthanasia proponents began to distance themselves from Kevorkian the moment his conviction was announced. They made sure to draw distinctions between Kevorkian's notions of "assisted suicide" and their own.

"We now know the unacceptable limits and we now, as a society, can move in the direction of those acceptable limits," George Eighmey, executive director of Compassion in Dying of Oregon, told the New York Times. "Let's move in the direction of the more moderate Oregon model, instead of the Kevorkian model."

Others continued to support Kevorkian. "He's a martyr," said Faye Girsh, president of the Hemlock Society, the Detroit News reported. "He's acted in a great American tradition of civil disobedience. It was so clearly not a crime."

Prosecutors used a risky strategy for this trial, dropping a charge of assisted suicide when Judge Jessica Cooper ruled that Kevorkian could introduce emotional testimony about Youk's condition under that charge. In his three previous acquittals, " jurors have been so moved by the suffering of Kevorkian's patients that they are unwilling to convict him," according to the Free Press.

The prosecution team formally charged Kevorkian with first- degree murder along with the drug-delivery charge. (During the trial, Cooper ruled that the jury could also consider second-degree murder or involuntary man-slaughter during their deliberations.) "This is a terrible disease, but those things are not the issue," Assistant Prosecutor John Skrzynski told the Free Press. "The law does not recognize mercy killing as a reason to kill somebody."

Without the assisted-suicide charge, Cooper refused to allow Youk's widow or other relatives to testify solely about his condition. Kevorkian tried to convince the judge to allow him to enter evidence about Youk's suffering, but she would not.

Kevorkian's defense lasted only 10 minutes with no witnesses, according to the Washington Post, compared to the prosecution's four hours and three witnesses. Judge Cooper repeatedly asked Kevorkian if he was sure he wanted to act as his own lawyer, even prodding him to answer or object to the prosecutor's case. " This man is attempting to convict you of murder," Cooper told Kevorkian at one point, according to the Free Press. "You need to respond to him."

Kevorkian insisted on remaining as his own lawyer, trying to use his own brand of "logic" to convince the jury to ignore the law. " [H]e scrawled a confusing logic equation on a blackboard, intending to prove that if a law does not necessarily equate homicide with murder but does equate euthanasia with homicide, then 'therefore euthanasia is not necessarily murder,'" the Post reported.

Skrzynski relied on the death videotape and medical facts for his case. He told jurors in closing arguments that evidence of Youk's disease should not affect their decision. "It would be hard for you to disregard Tom Youk's medical condition when you look at the videotapes back in the jury room...but his medical condition is not what is at issue here," Skrzynski said, according to press reports. "The law does not look at the victim and say, 'Does the victim have a quality of life that's worth protecting?' The law protects everyone. The law applies to everyone."

Kevorkian used his closing argument to depict himself as a courageous crusader for the right to assisted suicide. "There are certain acts that by sheer common sense are not crimes," he said. "Just look at me.... Honestly now, do you see a criminal? Do you see a murderer? . . . If you do, then you must convict. And then, take the harsh judgment of history, and the harsher judgment of your children and grandchildren if they ever come to need that precious choice."

Skrzynski rejected this view in his rebuttal, according to press reports: "He came like a medical hitman in the night with a bag of poison to do his job. This is not about assisted suicide. Thomas Youk did not kill himself."

The Kevorkian saga began in June 1990, when 54-year-old Janet Adkins, in the very early stages of Alzheimer's disease, killed herself reportedly with Kevorkian's help. Kevorkian's method of death then was a self-made "suicide machine" that would deliver lethal drugs with the touch of a button.

Kevorkian "acknowledged helping more than 130 people die since 1990," according to the Free Press. Dr. L.J. Dragovic, Oakland County's chief medical examiner, said that only 16 out of 69 victims he autopsied were terminally ill - - and five "showed no an atomical evidence of disease at all," Reader's Digest reported.

After a 1992 temporary assisted suicide ban, three trials that ended in acquittal, one mistrial, and various court cases, a permanent ban on assisted suicide went into effect in Michigan Septem-ber 1, 1998. Voters rejected assisted suicide in a November referendum, and the law is on the books today. Kevorkian waited only 16 days after the law went into effect to videotape himself killing Youk.

Ed Rivet, legislative director of Michigan Right to Life, said he felt profound relief after Kevorkian was convicted. "It's been a long road - - a nine-year odyssey to jail Kevorkian," he told NRL News. "It was just a matter of being patient and waiting for justice to play out, to wait until the system finally worked."

Rivet added that outrage against Kevorkian's actions has energized people to find other ways to manage pain and to give comfort to the suffering. "There's been a real shift in the public mindset," Rivet said. "People realize that it's OK to say no to assisted suicide; it's OK to say no to Jack. Everybody in the state is now focused on alternatives such as hospice care."

An editorial in the Washington Post succinctly described what was so heinous about Kevorkian's actions. "This is a man who has aided in the deaths of many people whom he did not know and had not previously treated and whose mental competency to decide to die he was in no position to assess," the editorial stated.

"Whatever one thinks of assisted suicide, there is something demonic about a freelance death peddler who seems - - as Dr. Kevorkian has over the years - - to be so energized by such morbid work. That juries kept acquitting him and that he acquired a kind of popular following should not obscure the fact that Dr. Kevorkian's crusade, despite his medical degree, had nothing to do with the practice of medicine," the Post concluded.