NRL News
Page 5
June 2007
Volume 34
Issue 6

“Dr. Death” Leaving Prison after Eight Years
BY Liz Townsend

Eight years after receiving a 10- to 25-year sentence for “helping” a Michigan man kill himself, Jack Kevorkian, 79, is scheduled to leave prison June 1. He will remain on parole for two years, during which time he cannot attend any assisted suicide or care for the disabled or elderly, according to the Detroit News.

Kevorkian was convicted March 26, 1999, of second-degree murder. The case was based on a videotape broadcast to the nation by 60 Minutes in November 1998, showing Kevorkian injecting Thomas Youk, 52, who had Lou Gehrig’s disease, with lethal drugs.

Youk was only one of many people who died with the “assistance” of Kevorkian. He admitted to 130 deaths between 1990 and 1999, according to the Detroit Free Press, including several people whose autopsies showed no evidence of any disease.

Before his trial for Youk’s death, in which he acted as his own lawyer, Kevorkian had been tried four times for assisting suicides. Three of those cases ended in acquittal, and one was declared a mistrial.

His first known participation in an assisted suicide was the death of 54-year-old Janet Adkins in 1990. In the very early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, Adkins killed herself using a Kevorkian-made “suicide machine” that would deliver lethal drugs with the touch of a button, the Free Press reported.

Kevorkian has said that while he will no longer assist suicides, he is determined to continue to speak out in favor of euthanasia. “It’s got to be legalized,” he told WJBK-TV. “That’s the point. I’ll work to have it legalized, but I won’t break any laws doing it.”

His first interview after his release will reportedly air on 60 Minutes June 3. After that, he will appear on Larry King Live, and will consider speaking engagements worth up to $100,000, Kevorkian’s attorney Mayer Morganroth told the News.

“He’s going to be interviewed by everybody and his brother,” Morganroth told USA Today.
In the years since Kevorkian was first convicted and jailed, opponents have fought off numerous efforts in a variety of states to legalize assisted suicide. Along the way they have had some success turning the discussion from facilitating death to dealing with pain.

“The solution is not to kill people who are getting inadequate pain management, but to remove barriers to adequate pain management,” said Burke Balch, who is the director of NRLC’s Powell Center for Medical Ethics.

“We need to come up with better solutions to human suffering and human need.”