‘Mercy killing’ is still a crime

Press, 12 August 1980, Page 17

‘Mercy killing’ is still a crime

Where one person kills another, the consent of that other to the infliction of death is no defence to a charge of murder. At common law, suicide was regarded as murder “felony of a man’s self”; although, attempted suicide was not attempted murder within a particular statute, and there is no such .thing ,as manslaughter of-oneself.

in England, by the Homicide Act, 1957, the crimes of killing another in pursuance of a suicide pact, and of being a party to his killing of himself in such pursuance, were reduced to manslaughter. By the Suicide Act of 1961 (United Kingdom), suicide ceased to be a crime. In New Zealand, according to Adams’s “Criminal Law and Practice in New Zealand,” suicide at the latest must have ceased to be a crime when the Code of 1893 was enacted; and while attempted suicide was a crime under the earlier Codes it was not so under the 1893 legislation. Actual suicide obviously could never be a crime expiated by the person committing it. Aiding or abetting suicide has been an offence under each of the successive New Zealand Codes. In the result it seems that the law in New Zealand about complicity in another’s suicide is substantially the same as in England. Section 179 of the (New Zealand). Crimes Act, 1961, says that "everyone is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 14 years who incites, counsels, or procures any person to commit suicide, if that person commits or attempts to commit suicide in consequence thereof; or aids or abets any person in the commission of suicide."

Suicide pacts are for the first time dealt with under section 180 of the Crimes Act: "Everyone who, in purusuance of a suicide pact, kills any other person is guilty of man-

slaughter and not of murder, and is liable accordingly.” Any survivor of a suicide pact in which someone dies may be improsioned for five years. Commenting on the position in Britain, the “Guardian” said last month; “Scotland Yard is investigating 12 cases of alleged euthanasia. A North London Coroner who called in the police to one of the cases believes that 200 to 250 other cases should be examined. “Few areas of the law are more unclear than mercy killing. Uncertainty is always a defect in a criminal justice . system, but when it surrounds such an emotionally charged issue as mercy killing the defect is compounded.” : The “Guardian" said that late last year a psychiatrist, Dr Colin Brewer, who admitted that he tried to kill a patient, was not prosecuted by the Director of Public Prosecutions. 'Dr Brewer disclosed that he had given “what I hoped would be a lethal dose of drugs to a man with terminal cancer” in the hope of easing his death. The dose did not work but Dr Brewer was not charged with attempted killing. Similarly, in 1978 a journalist, Derek Humphrey, explained in a moving book how he had made a contract with his. wife, who was suffering from breast cancer, that he would provide her with a fatal “cocktail” when she asked for it. The police and D.P.P. investigated the death but did not prosecute.

Dr Brewer concluded last year there had been an unaccounced change of social policy so that “doctors who wish to give their patients the benefit of active euthanasia may now do so.”

Although it has not been an offence since 1961 in England to : commit suicide, the section of the act which makes it an offence for helping someone to

kill himself is included to protect the vulnerable from friends and relatives who may, for the worst of all motives — like inheritance — persuade the seriously sick to commit suicide. “But in the 20 years since it was enacted the section is still occasionally wheeled out against mercy killers," the “Guardian” said.

“About two dozen people have been prosecuted since 1961. Although most have been either acquitted, discharged, or put on probation; all have had to suffer the trauma of police investigation, prosecution, and trial for an act of mercy.” The newspaper said that a distinction could be drawn between passive euthanasia (the withdrawal of treatment which would sustain life) and active euthanasia (which involved providing a fatal dose). As a letter to the British Medical Journal in 1977 noted, most doctors accept that some patients should be allowed to die: said the “Guardian.” “The debate is about the method: should it be slow, uncertain, and distressing; or quick, certain, and somewhat less distressing.” Several states in the United States have euthanasia laws. An attempt was made in Britain when Baroness Wootton introduced a private bill in the House of Lords in 1976, but it was defeated.