Michigan Court Action Makes Assisting Suicide Illegal Again
Helping someone commit suicide became a felony again Tuesday in Michigan when the state Court of Appeals blocked a lower judge’s order that had overturned a state ban on the practice.
The court said it would review a ban that the Legislature rushed into law Feb. 25 to stop retired pathologist Jack Kevorkian, a suicide machine inventor who has been present when 16 people have killed themselves. The law makes assisting in a suicide punishable by up to four years in prison and a $2,000 fine.
On May 20, Circuit Judge Cynthia Diane Stephens had struck down the law on technical grounds.
The Legislature had added the felony to a bill setting up a commission to recommend a state policy on assisted suicide. Stephens ruled that the law violated several constitutional provisions.
Kevorkian has vowed to defy the law and was present at one suicide since the law took effect. He was not charged, however, because prosecutors said there was not enough evidence that he assisted in the suicide.
State Atty. Gen. Frank Kelley asked the appeals court to review Stephens’ ruling, which came on a challenge to the ban by the Michigan chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Kevorkian’s attorney, Geoffrey Fieger, said the appeals court order was based on “fear and utter stupidity.”
The appeals court ruling allows prosecutors to charge people under the law, although no assisted suicide cases are pending.
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