Man Convicted of Encouraging Roommate to Commit Suicide : Crime: Verdict against Alex Coventry of Tujunga may be the state’s first under a rarely used, 121-year-old law.

A Tujunga man was convicted Monday on felony charges of helping his roommate commit suicide by handing him a loaded shotgun and telling him, “Just do it.”

The guilty verdict in the trial of Alex Coventry may represent the first conviction in the state under a rarely used, 121-year-old law that prohibits aiding, advising or encouraging someone to commit suicide.

After two days of deliberations, a Van Nuys Superior Court jury determined that Coventry, a 44-year-old recovering alcoholic, was criminally liable in the July 2, 1993, suicide of Leonard Medina, a 42-year-old unemployed man.

In interviews following the conviction, jurors said they focused on Coventry’s actions and the state law, ignoring any parallels with Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the retired Michigan pathologist who has admitted assisting 20 terminally ill patients end their lives.

“We understood this wasn’t a Kevorkian case and we weren’t here to judge whether suicide was right or wrong, but just whether a crime was committed in assisting someone in a suicide,” said juror Gregory Brown of Tujunga. “The fact was this person wasn’t terminally ill.”

Echoing statements he made throughout the trial, Deputy Dist. Atty. Andrew R. Flier distanced this case from those linked to Kevorkian. “If you set aside your actual viewpoints on this particular and sensitive issue, and you listen to the cold, hard facts, you see he violated” the law, the prosecutor said.

Judge Ronald S. Coen is expected to sentence Coventry this morning. He faces a maximum of three years in state prison, but Coventry’s attorney is hoping his client will be placed on probation.

According to testimony, Medina was despondent over an eviction notice and his bleak financial situation after a day of drinking with Coventry’s live-in girlfriend at the Tujunga apartment the trio shared. He threatened to kill himself, as he had many times before.

Coventry admitted to police that he handed his roommate a loaded shotgun and told him to “stop talking about it.” Although he did not testify on his own behalf, Coventry maintained during a tape-recorded police interview that he had no idea Medina would put the gun to his chest and pull the trigger, blowing a four-inch hole in his body.

Jurors reported that Coventry’s statement to police and another taped interview with his girlfriend, Linda McDowell, were at the center of their deliberations.

Coventry should have known Medina was serious about his threat because his friend had previously attempted to kill himself, jurors said. McDowell told police the shotgun was hidden out of fear that Medina would use it on himself.

“I think the one thing that got a lot of us was the fact that he knowingly handed him the shotgun, and it was knowingly loaded, and he knew the person had suicidal tendencies,” said juror Brown.

Agreeing that Medina was ultimately accountable for his own death, the panel of 10 men and two women felt Coventry’s actions clearly encouraged his depressed friend.

Coventry “had choices, he had options, he didn’t have to contribute to the whole act,” said jury foreman Bart McPhail of Valencia.

“I think ultimately we all believed that Alex was truly sorry after the fact . . . but we couldn’t ignore that it was after the fact,” McPhail said.

Defense attorney Kenneth P. Lezin said he interpreted his client’s taped statement differently. “My belief from the tape is it showed so clearly that he didn’t intend for Leonard to die,” he said.

Coventry told police he was shocked when Medina shot himself. He also suggested that the shooting may have been accidental, reasoning that Medina may not have known that the gun was actually loaded.

“Apparently, they wouldn’t accept that,” Lezin said.

Prosecutors said they were unaware of any other convictions under California’s assisted-suicide law. The Shasta County district attorney’s office reportedly declined to file charges recently against a physician in the assisted suicide of a terminally ill AIDS patient.