Kevorkian Attends Suicide Despite Ruling

A 78-year-old retired minister died Monday with Jack Kevorkian at his side, marking the first death the so-called suicide doctor has attended since the U.S. Supreme Court refused to shield him from prosecution.

The Rev. John E. Evans, who suffered from pulmonary fibrosis, a lung disease, died in a “manner consistent” with other deaths Kevorkian had attended, said Kevorkian’s lawyer, Geoffrey Fieger. He would not elaborate.

Evans and his family “had a right to decide at the end of his life how much suffering he had to undergo,” Fieger said. “They reject such attempts by those in government . . . who would make them suffer.”

Michigan’s Supreme Court ruled in December that there is no constitutional right to assisted suicide. While Michigan’s 1993 ban on assisting a suicide had expired, the court found that assisting a suicide is illegal under common law.

The U.S. Supreme Court decided last month not to hear an appeal of that ruling.

Kevorkian, a 66-year-old retired pathologist, has long said he does not feel bound by court rulings or laws against assisted suicide, calling it a fundamental right for a suffering person to decide to die.

Police are investigating Evans’ death, spokesman Don Novak said.

The death was the 22nd Kevorkian has attended since 1990. Most of those who committed suicide with Kevorkian’s help breathed carbon monoxide through a mask from a canister. The most recent before Monday was Nov. 26 in Royal Oak, in which a woman inhaled carbon monoxide.

Kevorkian faces charges of murder and assisting a suicide in five other Michigan cases.

Dr. Fernando Martinez, a pulmonary specialist at the University of Michigan, said pulmonary fibrosis, a scarring of the lungs, “can be very disabling, but it is not usually considered a fatal disease.”