Man denies charge of helping attempted suicide

Press, 23 July 1986, Page 10

Man denies charge of helping attempted suicide

PA Auckland An official of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society yesterday denied helping two women to attempt to commit suicide. Leo Joseph Stack, aged 76, secretary of the society, appeared in the District Court at Auckland on facing five charges arising from the suicide attempts. Stack was charged with counselling two women, aged 64 and 70, to commit suicide. He was also charged with aiding and abetting in their suicide attempts and offering to sell a controlled sedative to one woman, aged 64. At the end of a two-day depositions hearing, Mrs E. A. Wylie and Mr 0. R. Chaney, Justices of the

Peace, dismissed four of the charges. They announced that insufficient evidence had been presented to try Stack on the charges of counselling a woman, aged 70, to commit suicide and aiding and abetting her in a suicide attempt. They also ruled there was also insufficient evidence to try Stack on the charges of aiding and abetting the woman, aged 64, in the commission of suicide, and of offering to sell her the controlled sedative. Stack was then asked to plead on the charge of counselling the vzoman, aged 64, to commit suicide.

He denied the charge. Stack was committed to the High Court at Auck-

land for trial on that count.

Earlier yesterday Detective Inspector Craig Duncan told the Court he interviewed Stack after the suicide attempts.

Stack had said he "discussed many ways of committing suicide” with the woman, aged 64. “If there is any suggstion I gave her drugs I will give a categoric denial.”

Asked by Mr Duncan if he gave the woman, aged 64, any tablets at the time of the suicide attempt, Stack replied: “Very definitely not.” Stack also denied any involvement with the attempted suicide by the older woman. In evidence, the woman, aged 70, said Stack gave her some pills which she swallowed in

an attempt to take her life.

"The next thing I remember was I awoke in the hospital, and I did not know where I was.” She said she took about 30 halcion tablets, 15 to 20 diazapens and some valium on April 13. She gave Stack $5 and he gave her some of the tablets. The rest had been prescribed by her doctor. The woman said she suffered from arthritis in the spine, and after three operations was still unable to walk unaided, and was in constant pain. “I decided life was not worth living. I just felt that I had had enough. My husband was no longer alive and I had had enough,” she said. Earlier report, page 8