For Kevorkian, a Loss

Time has finally run out for Jack Kevorkian. The retired Michigan pathologist boasts that he has helped 130 persons to kill themselves. He has been tried four times on charges of assisting suicide. Three of those cases ended in acquittal, one in a mistrial. Last week, Kevorkian had his most serious encounter yet with the justice system, and this time he lost.

The evidence in the case left no doubt of his guilt. Kevorkian had himself videotaped giving a fatal injection to a victim of Lou Gehrig’s disease. The tape was broadcast on CBS-TV’s “60 Minutes,” along with Kevorkian’s challenge to prosecutors to charge him.

He was charged with first-degree murder, with lesser options later added. A Pontiac, Mich., jury in last week’s trial convicted Kevorkian of second-degree murder. He now faces a possible life sentence.

Kevorkian, 70, regards himself as a bold crusader for the right of those with incurable diseases or intractable pain to seek help in ending their own lives.

The question of a person’s right to die when illness has so diminished the quality of life that a voluntary death seems preferable is morally profound, endlessly troubling and legally unsettled. With his self-righteous insistence on making himself the focus of controversy, Kevorkian only obscured the issues that ethicists, physicians, the clergy and thoughtful laypersons continue to ponder.

A right to die does not include the right to serve as someone else’s executioner. Kevorkian never understood the distinction.