PONTIAC, Mich. Nov. 24 -- Three times, the State of Michigan has charged Jack A. Kevorkian with assisted suicide, and three times the state has failed to win a conviction.
Yesterday, Oakland County Prosecutor David Gorcyca said the state may now have no choice but to try the 70-year-old former pathologist once again, this time probably for homicide.
"It appeared homicide was committed," Gorcyca said.
In a videotape that appeared on CBS’s 60 Minutes Sunday, Kevorkian, who has admitted assisting with the suicides of more than 130 people with debilitating illnesses, ended the life of Thomas Youk, 52, by injecting two drugs into his veins. Youk, a former accountant from suburban Detroit, had been suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Gorcyca’s office subpoenaed the unedited tapes of the Sept. 17 killing from CBS yesterday. After the subpoena was issued, Kevorkian’s attorney, David Gorosh, said his client would turn over unedited tapes voluntarily as early as today.
On CNN’s Larry King Live last night, though, Gorcyca said Gorosh told him yesterday evening that Kevorkian would not voluntarily turn over the material.
In a newspaper interview conducted before the program aired, Kevorkian called Youk’s death "my first euthanasia," differentiating it from the assisted suicides in which the individual, rather than Kevorkian, pulled a string or pushed a button to start the flow of deadly drugs. Kevorkian said he changed his tactics to force the state to charge him.
While Gorcyca called the televised death a "disingenuous media ploy to garner attention," he said he thought that a crime had been committed and that the fact that Kevorkian had injected Youk would have to be "taken into account."
The charges "could be anywhere from assisted suicide to other charges," Gorcyca said.
The prosecutor also said that the fact that Youk seemed on the tapes to have agreed to the procedure would not have any bearing on whether charges were brought. "Consent is not a defense to homicide in the state of Michigan," Gorcyca said.
Police in Waterford Township, where Youk lived and where the incident took place, are investigating Youk’s death. Gorcyca said he would "probably wait at least a week" before deciding what to do.
And he vowed not to be lured into a "war of words" with the gray-haired Kevorkian, who said Sunday he would "starve myself to death" if convicted and sent to prison.
"When I took office, I anticipated and predicted this would happen," Gorcyca said of the ratcheting up of the assisted-suicide controversy.
In advance of the telecast, much of the controversy surrounding it had concerned the propriety of CBS putting the videotape on the air. Yesterday, the reaction focused on the deed itself and on Kevorkian.
Americans for Better Care of the Dying, an education and advocacy group for seriously ill Americans, blasted Kevorkian, but also said that Americans must demand much more compassionate care from their doctors at the end of life.
"This looked more like a person administering the death penalty to a criminal than an example of a ‘good death,’ " said Dr. Joanne Lynn, the group’s president. "Where were the tears and the love, the awe at the closing of life? No one ever paused to pray, to cry or hug. And there was no attempt to manage the patient’s symptoms. We are a medical profession that can handle ventilator systems well; surely we can handle symptoms like anxiety."
The American Medical Association released a statement calling Kevorkian’s actions "appalling," "a crime," and "an outrageous violation of medicine’s code of ethics."
That judgment was echoed by Marlene Ciechoski, a nurse therapist with the Philadelphia ALS chapter who watched the program from her bed at Hahnemann University Medical Center, where she is awaiting a heart transplant.
"That patient was put to sleep, and died worse than any pet that I’ve ever taken to a vet to be euthanized," she said. Even so, Ciechoski said that assisted suicide and euthanasia should be legalized. "I think it’s an individual’s choice," she said.
Florence Moore, 77, of Boothwyn, whose husband died of cancer, watched the program with family members, and said they all were in agreement. "Kevorkian is a hero," she said. "I’ve been through something like this. You ought to have a choice."
And Faye Girsh, president of the Hemlock Society, with 27,000 members nationally, commended Kevorkian. "The dramatic and moving scene of a person dying, gratefully and peacefully, with the help of a physician illustrates the need to legalize the practice of medical assistance in dying as part of the continuum of care at the end of life," Girsh said.
The 60 Minutes telecast drew a preliminary 15.7 rating Sunday night, Nielsen Media Research said yesterday. That means an estimated 15.6 million households were tuned in, the highest number for the show this season. The show’s average rating this season was 12.8, or an estimated 12.7 million households.
Sunday’s ratings will have to be adjusted to account for the six CBS affiliates that refused to air the segment. Affiliates owned by Dallas-based A.H. Belo Corp. in Houston; San Antonio; St. Louis; New Orleans; Tulsa, Okla.; and Spokane, Wash., broadcast local news instead.
In September, when Youk died, his body was found by a hospice nurse. (Family members had been kept away by Kevorkian, who said he did not want them charged as accomplices.) The nurse alerted the county coroner.
The coroner, noting that someone had tried to cover up needle marks on Youk’s arms, ruled his death a homicide. And although the coroner said he suspected who was involved, Kevorkian did not immediately take responsibility.
Sunday, in a newspaper interview, Kevorkian said that he had covered Youk’s needle wounds with "flesh-colored oil paint."
Gorcyca was elected to his post two years ago, succeeding a prosecutor who was widely characterized as overzealous in his continued prosecutions of Kevorkian.
After taking office, Gorcyca dismissed pending charges against Kevorkian, and said he would no longer "waste taxpayers’ money" by prosecuting him. Gorcyca said yesterday that circumstances had changed.
Raad Cawthon is a staff writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer. This article is reprinted with permission. Since then, Kevorkian has been charged with first degree murder, criminal assistance in a suicide, and illegal use of controlled substances.
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