Kevorkian Videotape Subpoenaed by D.A.

CHICAGO — Campaigning for the post of Oakland County prosecutor two years ago, David Gorcyca pledged to stop spending Michigan taxpayer dollars on longshot prosecutions of the world’s most provocative and resilient right-to-die proponent. He won the election, ousting the incumbent in suburban Detroit.

On Monday, Gorcyca found himself in a position not unlike that of his predecessor, if perhaps even more difficult. The night before, on a broadcast of “60 Minutes,” he and millions of other Americans watched as retired pathologist Jack Kevorkian appeared to commit murder, injecting a terminally ill amateur race car driver with a fatal three-drug cocktail.

Calling Kevorkian’s deliberate challenge to Michigan’s law against euthanasia, which took effect Sept. 1, “a disingenuous media ploy to garner publicity for himself,” Gorcyca said he had issued a subpoena for an unedited copy of the “60 Minutes” tape. But he vowed he would not be “baited” into filing charges until the investigation is complete.

“I saw a nonchalant, callous, businesslike approach involving the death of a person for the purpose of satisfying an attention-starved ego,” Gorcyca told reporters. “It would have been more appropriate to submit the tapes to the local law enforcement agencies than to a national TV show if Kevorkian legitimately wanted to challenge the statute in court.”

Although Gorcyca will be the one to decide whether or not to charge Kevorkian, he was not the only one left soul-searching by the grim television segment, which showed Kevorkian working needles into the right hand of Thomas Youk, 52, before Youk’s head fell slowly to the side, his mouth open, and Kevorkian intoned, “He’s flat-lined.”

Legal scholars and law enforcement officials focused on the legality of the Sept. 17 act--probably Kevorkian’s most provocative. Although he has helped more than 130 people take their lives, this was the first time he administered a lethal dose himself, Kevorkian said. Youk, of Waterford Township, Mich., was in the latter stages of Lou Gehrig’s disease and simply too weak to do it himself.

Members of the clergy debated the eternal consequences of taking your own life or helping someone else take theirs, with a spokesman for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit saying he witnessed “a publicity-hungry, unlicensed pathologist killing a visibly troubled, vulnerable man.”

Physicians considered the implications for all who have taken the Hippocratic Oath. Ethicists pondered the morality of euthanasia. And nearly everyone who saw the “60 Minutes” piece, it seemed, paused to consider televised dying.

“Is he dead now?” Mike Wallace asked as he and Kevorkian viewed the tape.

“He’s dying now,” Kevorkian replied.

In the “60 Minutes” segment, Youk’s wife, Melody, says she was “so grateful to know that someone would relieve him of his suffering. . . . I consider it the way things should be done.”

Kevorkian, 70, told the Oakland Press of Michigan before the broadcast: “I want a showdown. I want to be prosecuted for euthanasia. I am going to prove that this is not a crime . . . “

“This is vintage Jack Kevorkian,” said Larry Dubin, a professor at the Detroit Mercy School of Law. “He has certainly violated the current letter of the law, but a guilty verdict will be evidence to him that he lives in an unenlightened society, and he’ll starve to death in prison,” as Kevorkian has promised to do if convicted on criminal charges.

One of the most popular programs in the history of television news, CBS’s “60 Minutes” broadcast the segment in the midst of a “sweeps” period, when advertising rates are determined and when local stations have increasingly taken to broadcasting journalistically dubious pieces on sex, violence and other titillating topics in an attempt to boost ratings. Preliminary data showed that Sunday’s program drew the highest ratings of the season.

Six CBS affiliates owned by Dallas-based A. H. Belo Corp. declined to air the Kevorkian segment, broadcasting local news until the piece ended.

In a statement, CBS defended the broadcast, saying, “CBS News believes this program performed a public service.” The network said it had not yet received a subpoena and would study it before deciding whether to cooperate with Gorcyca.

Sandy Genelius, a CBS vice president for news in New York, said that reaction to the segment was mixed but that the majority of those calling or sending e-mails were critical.

Bruce Jennings of the Hastings Center, a bioethical think tank in New York, found fault with the piece. “I must say I don’t find it to be good editorial judgment to broadcast the death or murder of a person,” he said. “I believe that the broadcast simply played into his [Kevorkian’s] hands.”

Although some criticized the segment as a slide toward tabloid journalism for the revered show, Dick Schwarzlose, a professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, said the story was “a heavy way of doing business, but I think it was fair.”

Schwarzlose, who teaches courses in journalistic ethics, said CBS almost certainly considered the sweeps period before airing the story. But he was not so cynical as to believe the search for higher ratings was the primary purpose for the piece.

“There is a great deal of interest in this subject,” he said. “I’m 61 and I have more than a passing interest in death. I think if we give our audience the options and the choice and the warnings, then we’ve done about all we can do. We are supposed to provide fodder for discussion.”

Times researcher John Beckham contributed to this story.