Fasting for the Right to Die

By Bruce W. Nelan

In the middle of his war against the nation's traditional views on suicide, Jack Kevorkian -- Dr. Death -- has been taken prisoner. The 65-year-old retired pathologist was hauled into a Detroit courtroom last Friday to face charges of violating a new Michigan law that makes assisting suicides a crime. He went limp rather than post bond and had to be dragged out by the arms, his legs scraping the floor. "I won't eat," he vowed. Like a one-man Greek chorus, his lawyer intoned, "We are now beginning the death watch."

The irony had to be intentional. Kevorkian, who argues that everyone should have the right to decide when to die and that doctors should be allowed to help, has attended 19 suicides in the past three years. Now he was threatening to starve himself to death. Wearing green prison coveralls in a 10-ft. by 10- ft. isolation cell, he was refusing meals and drinking only water. His jailer, Wayne County Sheriff Robert Ficano, said Kevorkian would be watched closely and, if necessary as a last resort, the state would get a court order to authorize forced feeding. "Are we going to let Mr. Kevorkian die in our custody? No," he assured reporters.

Last Saturday afternoon, several hundred Kevorkian supporters, including friends and family members of the people he had helped commit suicide, held a protest meeting outside the jail. Not all of them understood why he had decided on a hunger strike, but they were prepared to back him.

Kevorkian did not have to go to jail at all; he could have put up a $2,000 bond payment and walked out of court. In fact, anyone can post the money and secure his release, but his lawyer, Geoffrey Fieger, urged supporters not to do so. It was typical of Kevorkian's defiant, publicity-conscious campaign that he chose a cell and a hunger strike. His objective is to attract attention and change minds. He argues that Michigan's law against assisted suicides, which was enacted specifically to halt his activities, is "immoral" and must be struck down. He has been charged with violating it twice, and he could be sentenced to four years' imprisonment if he is found guilty.

Though Kevorkian has often played videotapes and given press conferences after helping gravely ill men and women kill themselves, last week's legal confrontation was his most dramatic gesture yet. He had been ordered to stand trial for assisting in the suicide three months ago of a man suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease. Kevorkian was free on a personal bond as long as he did not help with any more such deaths -- a provision he may have violated in September when he attended the suicide of a 73-year-old man suffering from bone cancer. Last month a woman with Lou Gehrig's disease died in Kevorkian's apartment in a suburb of Detroit.

Michigan prosecutors responded with a request that Kevorkian's bond be increased from $10,000 to $20,000 and that he put up 10% of it in cash. In court Judge Thomas Jackson granted the increase, telling Kevorkian sharply that he had been in "utter contempt and flagrant violation" of the state law. Kevorkian's thin frame slumped, and he said, "I won't move."

At a news conference, Fieger compared his client's crusade with those of civil rights heroes Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks and India's Mahatma Gandhi. Kevorkian "does not wish to die," Fieger says, but he will continue his fast "unless he is released or the law is struck down." The legislation was overturned once in a county court earlier this year. But the state challenged the decision, and the Michigan Court of Appeals agreed to review it, meanwhile reinstating the law until a ruling comes, probably early next year. The waiting period will sternly test Kevorkian's resolve to fast -- and the state's determination to keep Dr. Death alive.

With reporting by Michael McBride/Detroit