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'Dr Death' to be set free
14/12/2006 08:06 - (SA)
Detroit - Jack Kevorkian, a fiery
assisted suicide advocate, will be released from a Michigan
prison in June after serving eight years for murder and vowing
never to help the terminally ill take their own lives again,
state officials said on Wednesday.
Known as "Dr Death", Kevorkian, 78, touched off a
firestorm of controversy in the 1990s for presiding as a
medical doctor in dozens of suicides and advocating the
legalisation of such procedures in the United States.
Kevorkian has been serving a 10- to 25-year sentence for
second-degree murder for giving lethal injections to a man with
Lou Gehrig's disease who died with Kevorkian's help in suburban Detroit in 1998.
A representative of the Michigan Parole Board interviewed
Kevorkian on Thursday. The state parole board then approved a
recommendation Kevorkian be paroled in June, the earliest
possible date for his release, officials said.
Russ Marlan, a spokesperson for Michigan's prison system, said Kevorkian acknowledged he had broken the law during a
flamboyant eight-year campaign to legalise assisted suicide.
"He said that anything that would bring him back to prison,
he will avoid. He said prison is no place to live," Marlan
said.
Kevorkian will not be allowed to counsel anyone on suicide
as a condition of parole, Marlan said, although he remains free
to speak out on the issue of assisted suicides.
Marlan said Kevorkian, who will serve a 24-month parole,
indicated that he planned to write and speak on the question of
assisted suicide once free. But Marlan added: "I think he sees his role in this issue as diminished."
Failing health
In 1997, Oregon became the first and only state to legalise
physician-assisted suicide in the United States.
Kevorkian, who claims he assisted in 130 deaths, had
thwarted four attempts by prosecutors to convict him and
flouted a state ban on assisted suicide that was passed in a
bid to stop him.
But in 1999 a Michigan jury convicted Kevorkian of
second-degree murder after he videotaped himself administering
lethal shots to 52-year-old Thomas Youk and sent the tape to
the CBS news show 60 Minutes.
In previous cases, Kevorkian had arranged to have those
seeking to die under his supervision pull a string or otherwise
start the process that led to their deaths from carbon dioxide
or injected drugs.
Kevorkian said he had hoped that the jury would acquit him
of the 1998 case and set a legal precedent for assisted suicide
in the United States.
Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm had repeatedly refused to
pardon Kevorkian or commute his sentence.
Kevorkian's lawyer, Mayer Morganroth, petitioned four times
for his client's early release, saying Kevorkian was unlikely
to survive in prison because of his failing health.
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