Crime, Deaths, Health Care / Medicine, Old People, Suicide

Jack Kevorkian, aka Dr. Death, Is Dead

By  
on

Jack Kevorkian was a Michigan pathologist — but the doctor spent more time in the courtroom than in the operating room. He was a frequent litigant, thanks to his central role in the national controversy over assisted suicide, whose legality he advocated.

Early this morning, “Dr. Death” died, at the age of 83. It’s telling that Kevorkian’s passing was confirmed to the media by his lawyer, Geoffrey Fieger (whose awesome website we’ve previously deconstructed). The exact cause of death was not immediately known, but Kevorkian reportedly suffered from kidney and respiratory problems.

UPDATE (10 AM): According to Mayer Morganroth, another attorney for Kevorkian, Kevorkian suffered a pulmonary thrombosis, when a blood clot in his leg broke free and moved up to his heart. Morganroth was with Kevorkian at the time of his death, according to the Detroit Free Press (via ABA Journal).

The legal system tried to stop Dr. Kevorkian from assisting in suicides for many years, without success….

From the New York Times:

Prosecutors, jurists, the state Legislature, the Michigan health authorities and Gov. John Engler seemed helpless to stop him, though they spent years trying. In 1991 a state judge, Alice Gilbert, issued a permanent injunction barring Dr. Kevorkian from using his suicide machine. The same year the state suspended his license to practice medicine. In 1993 Michigan approved a statute outlawing assisted suicide. It was declared unlawful by a state judge and the state Court of Appeals, but in 1994 the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that assisting in a suicide was a common-law felony, and that there was no protected right to suicide assistance under the state Constitution.

None of the legal restrictions seemed to matter to Dr. Kevorkian. In several instances he assisted in patient suicides just hours after being released from custody for helping in a previous one. After one arrest in 1993 he refused to post bond, and a day later he said he was on a hunger strike. During another arrest he fought with police officers and seemed to invite the opportunity to spend time in jail.

Sponsored

Hs website might be laughable, but Geoffrey Fieger, Kevorkian’s longtime attorney, seems to be a talented advocate:

From May 1994 to June 1997, Dr. Kevorkian stood trial four times in the deaths of six patients. With the help of his young and flamboyant defense attorney, Mr. Feiger, three of those trials ended in acquittal and the fourth was declared a mistrial.

But as they so often do, the prosecutors got their man in the end. In March 1999 — after a trial that lasted less than two days, in which Kevorkian represented himself — a jury convicted him of second-degree murder. He was sentenced to serve 10 to 25 years in a maximum security prison and ended up serving just eight: he was released on June 1, 2007, after promising not to conduct another assisted suicide.

Kevorkian may have influenced the legal system more than the legal system influenced him:

[H]is critics and supporters generally agree on this: As a result of his stubborn and often intemperate advocacy for the right of the terminally ill to choose how they die, hospice care has boomed in the United States, and physicians have become more sympathetic to their pain and more willing to prescribe medication to relieve it.

In 1997, Oregon became the first state to enact a statute making it legal for physicians to prescribe lethal medications to help terminally ill patients end their lives. In 2006 the United States Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that found that Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act protected a legitimate medical practice.

Sponsored

Whether you love him or hate him, you can’t deny that Dr. Kevorkian made a difference in the world. Feel free to share your thoughts about him, in the comments.

Jack Kevorkian Dies at 83; Backed Assisted Suicide [New York Times]
Assisted suicide advocate Jack Kevorkian dies [Detroit Free Press via ABA Journal]

Earlier: Further Adventures in Attorney Website Photos

Topics

, , , , , , , , , ,