Assisted Suicide Issue Arises in Designer’s Death

Interior designer James Northcutt’s newspaper obituary in December contained no mention of his cause of death, only the explanation that he had instructed his survivors not to disclose it.

But in a development that he doubtless never imagined, the nature of his death has become the painfully public subject of court documents and police reports.

Northcutt, well-known for his design of luxury hotel and resort interiors, committed suicide with the help of his lover, Keith W. Green. Ravaged by AIDS, Northcutt died Dec. 4 in his carbon monoxide-filled BMW in the garage of his expansive Los Angeles home.

Green was arrested hours later for murder, on the grounds that he had taken an active role in Northcutt’s suicide. Friday, prosecutors dropped the murder count, but Green remains charged with aiding and abetting a suicide, a felony.

His prosecution underscores the legal and ethical questions that have made assisted suicide a passionately debated issue, not only at the bedsides of the terminally ill, but in courts and legislative chambers.

AIDS patients in various states, including California, have joined legal challenges to bans on assisted suicide.

“It’s a very difficult thing for all of us,” said Carolyn McNary, the deputy district attorney prosecuting Green. “We have feelings that people should not suffer. But you have to protect people who are susceptible” to the unscrupulous.

Green’s attorney, John Duran, called the murder charge “gross overfiling” and has asked the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office to drop the assisting-suicide count as well.

“This sort of activity is not criminal and is not something the state should use its resources to prosecute,” Duran said. “It’s not just.”

Nor, he noted, is assisted suicide particularly uncommon among people with AIDS. “I know I’ve had to give legal advice and counsel to many individuals who [want to] participate in assisted suicide,” Duran said.

California’s suicide law, more than a century old and rarely used, makes it a felony to deliberately aid, advise or encourage another to commit suicide.

In Green’s case, McNary said, murder charges were also initially filed because some of his statements were inconsistent and because he stands to inherit a substantial amount of money from Northcutt’s estate--which Duran estimated is worth roughly $2 million.

“If someone inherits such a bunch of money, it tends to rouse suspicions,” McNary said.

Now, she added, “Enough of the major questions have been answered so we feel comfortable dismissing the murder charge . . . the facts don’t support that charge.”

Green, 36, declined to speak about the case, but police records tell his story.

He had lived for eight years with Northcutt, 54, whose health began to decline rapidly last year. In July, after a party at the couple’s Laurel Way home, Northcutt attempted suicide by taking an overdose of Demerol in front of Green and five friends. The dosage had little effect. Green called 911 and Northcutt recovered.

But he continued to waste away. According to Green’s statement to Los Angeles police, Northcutt’s weight had fallen to 110 pounds, from 165, by November. He was going blind in one eye and “was so weak he could barely move.”

His doctors gave him four to five more months to live, but that was not what Northcutt wanted, Duran said. “We had a very proud businessman who was losing control of his body,” he said.

And so, Green told police, he helped plan his partner’s next suicide attempt. “He told me he had already tested the effectiveness of taping the hose to the [car] exhaust pipe,” Green said.

On Dec. 4, the statement continues, Northcutt took an overdose of medication and went with Green into the garage of his $1.6-million home. The two taped a pool hose to the exhaust pipe of the BMW and ran it to the rear window.

“James then said to me, ‘OK, time for you to leave,’ ” Green told police.

Green got in his car and drove down the street. When he returned some time later, he called the business manager of Northcutt’s design firm. Then, apparently for a brief time, he got into the black BMW with Northcutt and held his hand as the engine continued to run, according to records in the case.

The manager, who arrived soon after, called 911 and turned the engine off. Police found Northcutt dead in the front seat, his hands in his lap and a bottle of Evian water at his side. A handwritten suicide note was on the kitchen counter.

Green was taken into custody after giving statements to police. While he was in jail, Duran said, Northcutt’s probate attorneys changed the locks on the house, in which Green does not share ownership. Now free on his own recognizance, Green has since been allowed to get his clothes but has been forced to live with friends.

“He’s been treated like a complete outsider,” Duran complained. “If this had involved husband and wife, they wouldn’t have locked the wife out of the house, or the husband.”

The estate attorneys declined comment on the case, but it is known that there are other beneficiaries.

Green’s inheritance is at stake if he is convicted of assisting Northcutt’s suicide. Under probate law, anyone found to have feloniously killed another is precluded from benefiting from their estate.

For that reason, Duran said, his client cannot enter a plea bargain and is headed for a trial on the charge, which carries a maximum three-year prison sentence.

The debate over assisted suicide is an intense one, propelled in part by people with AIDS, who have a higher rate of suicide than the general population.

Efforts to legalize assisted suicide in California have so far failed. A bill to allow physician-assisted suicide was withdrawn from the Legislature last year and a similar ballot measure was previously defeated at the polls.

Duran said Green was not knowledgeable about the suicide law. “He spoke to the police because he didn’t think what he’d done was criminal,” he said.