Kevorkian Is Acquitted for Role in Suicide

Jack Kevorkian was acquitted Monday in the first jury test of Michigan’s assisted-suicide ban by a panel that decided the law allows attempts to relieve pain and suffering.

In the wake of the verdict, Wayne County Prosecuting Atty. John D. O’Hair said he does not intend to prosecute any more alleged violations of the law, at least until the state Court of Appeals or the Legislature provide further guidance.

The appeals court is reviewing the ban, which expires in November. The Legislature is supposed to consider how to address the assisted-suicide issue by then.

The jury started its deliberations Thursday by holding hands and standing to pray, members said Monday. Then the nine women and three men cried, argued bitterly and traded stories about their own experiences with the terminally ill. After 9 1/2 hours over three days they finally agreed that Kevorkian’s only motive in helping 30-year-old Thomas Hyde kill himself last August was to ease the young man’s battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a degenerative nerve disorder, which is also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

“The decision in the Hyde case is a decision that the Legislature cannot ignore,” said O’Hair. The prosecutor has been a vocal member of a citizens commission advising the Legislature. He has proposed allowing physician-assisted suicide under strict conditions.

O’Hair said he brought charges against Kevorkian, 65, “because I do believe that the law should be respected and honored.”

He added: “It’s going to be difficult to obtain convictions in these extreme cases. Those who feel strongly opposed to decriminalization should really take note that you’re still going to have an assisted suicide that is condoned.” With the current confusion, he said, he would only bring a case involving “patent abuse.”

Kevorkian, who has attended 20 suicides since 1990--five since the ban took effect last year--said he expects physicians now to step forward and publicly support assisted suicide and help him set guidelines for the practice.

He would not rule out helping to end another life in the meantime.

Kevorkian’s attorney, Geoffrey N. Fieger, said the verdict “drives a stake through (the ban’s) heart.” Three other trial judges have dismissed similar charges against Kevorkian, holding the ban unconstitutional.

Kevorkian is collecting signatures for a statewide ballot measure to guarantee constitutionally the right to assist the ending of intolerable pain by ending life.

Nevertheless, prosecutors and jurors alike pleaded for a clear policy from the state’s judicial and political leaders.

“You’ve got a Court of Appeals that’s been sitting on this case for four months,” said Timothy Kenny, who prosecuted the case.

“Let somebody else decide. It’s not for me,” said juror Gail Donaldson, a 42-year-old visiting nurse who said she believes suicide is wrong but that a loophole in the law as written permitted Kevorkian to act.

She and the others accepted Fieger’s interpretation of a subsection in the statute that the ban does not apply when medication or procedures are administered “to relieve pain and suffering and not to cause death”--even if the death may be hastened. Kenny argued that the wording was intended to protect doctors prescribing experimental drugs or methods.

In a statement from Washington, the National Right to Life Committee condemned the verdict.

“There are many disabled and terminally ill people who may now be coerced into using assisted suicide,” said Rhonda Franz, committee president. “Instead, society should offer them alternatives to suicide to show them we value their lives.”

During five days of testimony, Hyde’s brother and fiancee described the toll that the disease had taken on the former landscaper and construction worker.

Emotions peaked when Hyde appeared on videotape, recorded during his first counseling session with Kevorkian 34 days before his death.

Hyde could barely swallow. His left arm hung useless and he struggled to move his right. He smiled and grimaced involuntarily. He spent minutes choking out a phrase. “I want to end it,” he finally was able to explain. “I want to die.”

At least three jurors wept openly. The electrician who would be elected jury foreman shielded his face with his hands.

“It brought back memories,” said Donaldson, who cared for a dying sister and father.

In closing arguments, Fieger asked the jury: “What kind of people are we that we would treat Thomas Hyde worse than a pet . . . that we would say to Thomas Hyde: ‘You must choke to death on your own spit?’ ”

In the beginning, however, he also tried a surprise gambit, announcing that Hyde did not die on the island park in Detroit, where Kevorkian surrendered to police, but in a parking lot behind Kevorkian’s apartment in neighboring Oakland County.

Hyde had inhaled carbon monoxide from a canister while lying on a mattress in the back of a van.

Detroit Recorder’s Court Judge Thomas E. Jackson instructed jurors to acquit Kevorkian if the prosecutor had not proved Hyde had died in Wayne County.

If geography had been the pivotal reason for the acquittal, O’Hair said, “this decision would have been meaningless.”

Kevorkian himself was unhappy with the tactic. “Do you think I didn’t want to confront this travesty of a law?” he snapped during a break in the trial.

Location was much discussed but not a serious factor in the decision, three jurors said in courtroom interviews after the verdict.

“It came down to the way the law was worded,” Gwen Bryson, 51, said.

One holdout wanted to convict Kevorkian until the jury asked for a copy of the law and went over its language, Donaldson said.

Bryson said she thought the jury’s makeup--five were employed in nursing-related occupations--helped determine the outcome. She is a certified nursing assistant and often works with elderly patients.

“You see a lot of suffering,” she said.

Times staff writer Stephen Braun contributed to this story from Chicago.