Kevorkian’s Last Patient Recorded His Wish to Die : Euthanasia: Videotape is shown at hearing for retired pathologist. He faces charge of violating Michigan’s ban on assisted suicide.

Terminally ill Thomas Hyde, trembling in pain, told retired pathologist Jack Kevorkian: “I want to end this, I want to die,” in a videotaped conversation a month before Kevorkian helped him commit suicide.

The 30-minute tape was played during Kevorkian’s preliminary hearing Friday on a charge that he broke Michigan’s law banning assisted suicide. The hearing will continue Sept. 9.

Kevorkian has admitted helping the 30-year-old Hyde kill himself Aug. 4 on an island park in the Detroit River. Hyde, who suffered from Lou Gehrig’s disease, released a clamp that freed a flow of carbon monoxide to a face mask placed over his mouth and nose by Kevorkian.

Hyde was the 17th person to die in Kevorkian’s presence since 1990.

In the July 1 videotape presented by the defense, Hyde was sitting at a table in his apartment. His fiancee, Heidi Fernandez, was on one side and Kevorkian on the other. They discussed Hyde’s debilitating condition and his painful muscle cramping.

Having trouble swallowing, Hyde wiped saliva from his chin.

“Do you have any reservations?” Kevorkian asked.

“Oh, no,” said Hyde, who haltingly uttered only monosyllables.

“Is it your choice absolutely?” Kevorkian asked.

“Mine, mine,” Hyde said, motioning his hands to his chest.

“Tom is suffering so,” Fernandez said, caressing Hyde’s shoulder. “He wants to be free--to be free of this body. His soul will be free.”

Kevorkian assured Hyde that he could change his mind at any time. “You won’t hurt our feelings a bit,” he said.

Kevorkian presented Hyde with a contract affirming that Hyde was seeking Kevorkian’s help of his own free will to end his “interminable pain and-or suffering.”

Hyde scrawled his name on the document. He and his fiancee broke into tears as they embraced.

The courtroom remained quiet except for the soft weeping of Fernandez, who sat in the front row with other Kevorkian supporters.

Right-to-life advocate Lynn Mills sat in the second row. She called the videotape “very sad.”

“But I think there was life left in him,” she said.

Kevorkian, 65, spoke with reporters during an impromptu news conference outside the courtroom.

“From watching the tape, does anyone doubt that the procedure is meticulously carried out? Or is that a loose cannon on that tape?” Kevorkian asked.

Before the hearing, Kevorkian’s lawyer, Geoffrey Fieger, filed a motion to dismiss the charge against Kevorkian on grounds that the ban on assisted suicide is unconstitutional.