Word: exits
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...crackdown on Final Exit Network, a group based in Marietta, Ga., that is accused of assisted suicide, has revived the right-to-die debate that was fueled in the 1990s by Jack Kevorkian, the Michigan doctor who assisted in the deaths of 130 terminally ill people. But Final Exit claims that its volunteers do not perform assisted suicides à la Kevorkian, who was convicted of second-degree murder and went to prison for giving a lethal injection to a man suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease. Rather, the group argues that it merely provides a "compassionate presence" for terminally...
...enforcement believes otherwise, and has charged the group with assisted suicide, evidence-tampering and racketeering. Authorities say the group broke the law by assisting with at least 130 suicides across the country and disposing of the helium tank and "exit hood" used to ensure a person inhales only that gas instead of oxygen. The authorities have also frozen the group's assets, effectively putting it out of commission. Four of the group's members - including its medical director, Dr. Lawrence Egbert, who lives in Baltimore - were charged last week in the death of a Georgia man in June. (See pictures...
...whether they would benefit from having more resources, like home-care aides, at their disposal. The debate is an emotional one, says Paul Wolpe, director of the Atlanta-based Emory Center for Ethics, mainly because Americans are still uneasy with the idea of assisted suicide. Yet Jerry Dincin, Final Exit's vice president, believes the sentiment could be changing and that the right to die could become "the human right of the 21st century...
...Washington State and Montana voted late last year to legalize physician-assisted suicide. Oregon has had a physician-assisted suicide law since 1994, and New Hampshire, Massachusetts and New Mexico are considering whether to pass similar laws. In Georgia, however, assisted suicide is a felony, and members of Final Exit could face up to five years in prison if convicted of that charge. They also face three years for evidence-tampering and 20 years for racketeering...
Convicting Final Exit could be difficult. Prosecutors will have to prove just how involved the group was beyond providing information about suicide and holding a dying person's hand. "If the equipment was purchased by the dying person and the only thing the group did was provide a manual on how to do it, that seems very minimal and like it might fall outside the scope of [the law]," says Ani Satz, a law professor at Emory University...