Right-to-Die Case Goes to High Court : Jurisprudence: The state justices agree to decide whether prison officials can forcibly feed and treat a quadriplegic prison inmate who seeks to starve himself.

The state Supreme Court, entering a novel “right-to-die” dispute, agreed Thursday to decide whether prison officials can forcibly feed and treat a quadriplegic inmate who went on a hunger strike in an apparent attempt to end his life.

In a brief order, the justices said they would hear arguments by state authorities that they have an ethical and legal duty to provide lifesaving care for Howard Kelly Andrews, 29, a convicted murderer now serving a term of 15 years to life at the California Medical Facility at Vacaville.

The action marked the first time the state high court has agreed to rule in a case raising the complex right-to-die issue.

While state statutes and lower-court decisions have recognized the right of mentally competent persons to refuse lifesaving medical treatment, the question of the right of a person in state custody to reject treatment remains unresolved. No hearing date was set by the high court.

Both a Solano County Superior Court judge and a state appellate court panel in San Francisco refused to issue permanent rulings that would allow prison personnel to forcibly feed and treat Andrews. The high court, however, extended indefinitely a previous temporary order allowing forced care and feeding while the case is before the courts.

The appeal court, in a decision last month, said that while prison officials have a general legal obligation to provide medical care to prisoners, that duty must yield to an individual’s right to refuse unwanted medical treatment.

State Deputy Atty. Gen. George D. Prince on Thursday welcomed the high court’s intervention in the case, saying a decision would likely resolve the dilemma of prison medical authorities faced with prisoners who refuse food and treatment.

“Medical professionals in such a situation need to know what responsibilities they have and what their patients’ rights are,” said Prince. “Right now, it’s a no-win situation. If they honor the patient’s request and don’t treat them, they run the risk of being sued by the survivors.”

Andrews pleaded guilty in Madera County to second-degree murder in the 1989 stabbing death of Miryam Kay. Later, according to state prosecutors, Andrews became paralyzed from the shoulders down after he jumped off a third-tier deck while incarcerated at Folsom Prison.

At present, he cannot feed himself and is receiving medication to guard against a pulmonary embolism that could prove fatal, prosecutors said.

Last October he began a hunger strike and his weight dropped from 190 to 151 pounds. Prison psychiatrists who examined him concluded he was seriously depressed but not suffering from a major mental illness.

In their petition for review to the high court, state authorities sought to distinguish Andrews’ case from the highly publicized case of Elizabeth Bouvia, a paralyzed woman who sought to starve herself to death while under hospital care.

A state appeal court ruled in 1986 that Bouvia had the right to refuse medical treatment. She said in a 1988 interview that she still wanted to end her life but had decided it was not yet the right time.

State attorneys contended that unlike Bouvia, Andrews was an inmate in state custody, was not suffering pain from treatment and, provided he cooperated, did not need a respirator to breathe or a tube to be fed. In his apparent desire to die, Andrews merely was seeking “relief” from the prospect of a lengthy prison term, state authorities said.