Word: chayet
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Dates: during 1974-1974
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...lawyers also contend that the indictments invade the right to privacy between a physician and patient. All motions will be debated in preliminary hearings before a judge not yet named and at a time not yet decided. "These constitutional questions are our strongest hope prior to trial," Neil L. Chayet, Charles's attorney, said last week...
Should they be tried, though, the doctors appear prepared to argue their innocence on all fronts, from a possible refutation of Flanagan's simple grave-robbing case, to a complicated justification of their alleged conduct from a medical ethics standpoint. Chayet said last week that a "number" of researchers--none of whom he would name--had offered to testify for the defense, and that as a result the defense's stance on medical ethics would be "formidable and considerable." The motions do imply, however, that the lawyers expect the trial debate to descend into an argument over the abortion issue...
Along this line, Chayet says, the defense may cite the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision of Roe v. Wade in January 1973 and also a Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court finding of July 1974 in Doe v. Doe. The Supreme Court's "abortion decision" asserted that a woman has the right of privacy to terminate a pregnancy with the approval of a physician. The majority opinion in the latter case held that this right obtains even where a husband objects. "In both cases a great deal of authority is given to the mother," Chayet added. A national commission...
...Chayet said last week that the defense has yet to sit down with Flanagan and discuss the case, but a key question in the motion for a bill of particulars asks the state to disclose the "date(s) on which the Commonwealth contends the alleged decedent named in the indictment became a human body, human being, or person." Whether the lawyers will accept Flanagan's "live-and-kicking" thesis remains to be seen, but it's a good bet that Flanagan will make his case first as the prosecutor in the Edelin man-slaughter trial, which begins probably in October...
...meantime, Chayet says he may join the other defending lawyers in a motion for specification, to clear up just what the clients are supposed to have done wrong...