Kevorkian Helps Man Commit Suicide

Retired Michigan pathologist Jack Kevorkian helped a 53-year-old man who was suffering from bone cancer to commit suicide Wednesday, the ninth person and the first male to do so with his assistance.

Jack Elmer Miller’s death was announced in a statement released by Kevorkian’s lawyer, Geoffrey N. Fieger, in Detroit. It said that Miller’s last words were, “I love you all.”

The statement said Miller’s fiancee, Cynthia Lee Coffee, Kevorkian and two Kevorkian assistants were present when Miller died. Coffee reported the death to police in Huron Township, a Detroit suburb.

Fieger said Miller, of Huron Township, died after breathing carbon monoxide through a mask. He triggered his own death by removing a metal clip from plastic tubing that connected a canister of carbon monoxide to the mask.

Fieger added that Miller “had decided approximately two months ago that the pain from the metastasis bone cancer was far too great.”

The last two suicides in which Kevorkian assisted took place on Dec. 15, a few hours before Michigan Gov. John Engler signed legislation outlawing physician-assisted suicide in the state.

But the new law, a temporary, two-year measure that also establishes a commission to study the social and ethical ramifications of physician-assisted suicide, does not take effect until March 30.

Beginning on that date, violators of the new law could face as many as four years in prison and a $2,000 fine. But Kevorkian has vowed to ignore the law.