Live Big (originally aired February 21, 2006)
Alan and Denny help defend a man who is on trial for euthanizing his wife and who may have a secret. Shirley serves as the best man at her ex-husband's wedding, and Paul sees his estranged daughter.
- Assisted Suicide. Nearly all states prohibit assisted suicide. In New York, for example, intentionally causing or aiding someone to commit suicide is considered manslaughter in the second degree under Penal Law 125.15, and is punishable by up to 15 years in jail.
In recent years, many people have tried to change laws prohibiting physician-assisted suicide in the political arena and in the courts. Most of these efforts have ultimately failed, with Oregon the first and still only state to have permitted physician-assisted suicide in certain circumstances.
The United States Supreme Court on January 17, 2005 upheld Oregon's assisted suicide program, which allows doctors to prescribe lethal doses of medication for terminally ill patients and which was created after voters approved initiatives in 1994 and 1997. More than 200 people have committed suicide via the program from 1998 to 2004 (see report by Oregon's Department of Human Services (on-line here). The federal government sought to block the Oregon law as violating the federal Controlled Substances Act, but this argument was rejected by some lower courts. The Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 majority that the CSA was not meant to cover medical practices that a state had deemed legitimate (opinion on-line here).
Doctors in Washington State and New York challenged their respective states' laws prohibiting assisted suicide in the 1990s, arguing that allowing terminally-ill patients to refuse medical treatment but not allowing them to receive fatal doses of medical treatment was unconstitutional. The United States Supreme Court rejected these challenges in 1997, holding that there was no constitutional right to commit suicide or to have assistance in doing so. Laws prohibiting assisted-suicide thus can be undone only through the political process, not through the courts.
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By Stephen Lee
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