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Georgia Supreme Court Cites Free Speech Concerns in Striking down state law banning public advertising of suicide

Feb 8, 2012

By Dave Andrusko

Georgia Supreme Court Justice Hugh Thompson

In a decision that was not unexpected, the Georgia Supreme Court yesterday unanimously struck down a 1994 state law that banned people from publicly advertising suicide. The measure was passed at a time when “Dr. Death”—Jack Kevorkian—was busy “assisting” suicides. The court reached its decision on the grounds that the ban infringed on free speech rights protected in both the Georgia Constitution and the United States Constitution.

The law does not expressly ban assisted suicide, as the justices pointedly noted in their brief eight-page decision, written by Justice Hugh Thompson. Instead there are felony charges only for anyone who “publicly advertises, offers or holds himself out as offering that he or she will intentionally and actively assist another person in the commission of suicide and commits any overt act to further that purpose.”

The immediate impact is that four members of the “Final Exit Network” will not stand trial for their roles in the 2008 death of John Celmer, a 58-year-old cancer patient whose cancer was in remission. Prosecutors said members of FEN helped Celmer use an “exit hood” that was connected to a helium tank to kill himself.

National Right to Life immediately responded to the 7-0 decision.

“The ruling by the Georgia Supreme Court puts the lives of older people and those with disabilities in grave danger because it opens the door for the fringe advocates of doctor-prescribed death to openly advertise the practice in the state of Georgia,” said Burke Balch, J.D., director of National Right to Life’s Powell Center for Medical Ethics. “This ruling essentially says if you want to advertise helping people jump off a cliff, you can hang out your shingle in Georgia.”

At present only Oregon and Washington State have legalized doctor-prescribed death. A Montana Supreme Court ruling in 2010 left the status of assisting suicide in that state ambiguous. Other efforts to legalize the practice, which would put countless patients at risk, have been defeated in Maine, Hawaii, and Michigan among others.

“We call on the Georgia legislature to quickly remedy today’s ruling by enacting into statute legal protections against doctor-prescribed death and other forms of assisting suicide,” added Balch. “Failure to take swift action could result in the deaths of countless older people and those with disabilities.”

Writing for the disability rights organization Not Dead Yet, Stephen Drake observed that Justice Thompson “noted that the law only criminalizes those assisted suicides that include a public advertisement or offer to assist. Many assisted suicides are either not prohibited or expressly exempted, and the law does not render illegal all advertisements or offers to assist in a suicide.”

Specifically, Justice Thompson wrote,

“Had the state truly been interested in the preservation of human life, however, it could have imposed a ban on all assisted suicides with no restriction on protected speech whatsoever. Alternatively, the state could have sought to prohibit all offers to assist in suicide when accompanied by an overt act to accomplish that goal. The state here did neither.”

He added,

“The State has failed to provide any explanation or evidence as to why a public advertisement or offer to assist in an otherwise legal activity is sufficiently problematic to justify an intrusion on protected speech rights.”

According to the  Associated Press, “The decision left open a route for state lawmakers to explicitly outlaw all assisted suicides, as long as the law doesn’t infringe on free speech rights. Legislative leaders haven’t ruled out introducing legislation that would do just that, and the Georgia Attorney General’s office said it’s ready to help lawmakers if they bring forward legislation in response to the ruling.”

Forsyth District Attorney Penny Penn told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution she was confident they would have won convictions against the four defendants had the law been upheld

“They behave irresponsibly and prey on people who are vulnerable,” Penn said. “John Celmer wasn’t terminally ill. He had cancer, but it was in remission.”

Penn “called on state lawmakers to try once again to write a new statute that criminalizes the work of organizations like the Final Exit Network,” according to the Journal-Constitution.

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Categories: Assisted Suicide