No Assisted Suicide Charge for Son of Sir Edward Downes
BBC News (March 19, 2010)

My very first post for the Death Reference Desk occurred on July 15, 2009 and it discussed the deaths of Edward and Joan Downes. The Downes’ went to the Dignitas Clinic in Switzerland to die together, their’s is a common story in the UK. Indeed, the stories about UK residents going to the Dignitas clinic remain an almost weekly occurrence.

What is new about the Downes’ case is that the Director of Public Prosecutions in the UK (Keir Starmer) has decided to not charge either of the Downes’ children with assisting their parents to die. I have discussed at length how suicide in the UK is legal but assisting a person to die is not. The Death Ref section on the Death + The Law presents these cases. Today’s legal decision is also important because it is the first time that the new guidelines drawn up by Keir Starmer have found no public interest in prosecuting a family member who clearly acted on compassionate grounds.

I am including a news clip from last July about Joan and Edward Downes. It’s interesting to note what has and hasn’t changed since then.

Debbie Purdy wins ‘significant legal victory’ on assisted suicide
Afua Hirsch, The Guardian (July 30, 2009)

An important turn today for UK Assisted Dying supporters (which is about 62% of the public…).

I will let The Guardian newspaper explain:

Debbie Purdy has won a significant legal victory in the House of Lords which lawyers are describing as a turning point for the law on assisted suicide.

Purdy, 46, from Bradford, West Yorkshire, who has primary progressive multiple sclerosis, succeeded in arguing that it is a breach of her human rights not to know whether her husband, Cuban jazz violinist Omar Puente, will be prosecuted if he accompanies her to Swiss clinic Dignitas where she wishes to die if her condition worsens.

The decision – the last ever by the law lords before they recommence work as justices of the new supreme court in October – went further than expected in Purdy’s favour, lawyers say.

Ordering the director of public prosecutions to issue a policy setting out when those in Puente’s position can expect to face prosecution, the court ruled that the current lack of clarity is a violation of the right to a private and family life.

The Purdy case is important and it will presumably force a change in UK law. As it currently stands, the UK’s 1961 Suicide Act decriminalizes suicide if you kill yourself. But any person whom:

aids, abets, counsels or procures the suicide of another, or an attempt by another to commit suicide, shall be liable on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for a term not exceeding fourteen years.

What that aiding, abetting, counseling, and procuring entails is really ambiguous. It is all so unclear that UK Prosecutors have been declining to press charges against families that accompany, say, a loved one to die in the Dignitas Clinic.

For an extremely thorough history on the Assisted Dying debate in the UK, see the Guardian’s Assisted Suicide page.

I discussed much of this information a few weeks ago in a Death Reference Desk post about the recent deaths of Edward and Joan Downes.

Since the Downes’ deaths and that discussion, I came across the following article: ‘Romantic’ death may idealize suicide: critics. Maybe. But I’m not so convinced. If anything, what Edward and Joan Downes chose to do was die and to die together. It was an act of love, to be sure, but I’m not ready to call it romance.

They chose death over a biological life neither one of them wanted to live.

It is absolutely acceptable to choose death. And family members and/or friends who want to assist in that choice should be able to do so without fear of the law.

But LOOK OUT: Scotland might beat England to the punch. Scottish MPs are discussing a change to Scotland’s own assisted suicide laws.

And Scottish MP Margo MacDonald is leading a fierce charge.

With Help, Conductor and Wife Ended Lives
John F. Burns, New York Times (July 14, 2009)

For several years now, the UK press has reported on individuals and couples who travel to the Dignitas Clinic in Switzerland to end their lives. The most recent articles focus on Sir Edward Downes and his wife Joan. Joan Downes had terminal cancer and based upon statements by family members, Edward Downes (who did not suffer from any terminal disease) accompanied his wife in order to die with her. The Downes’ case, while tragic, is but one of many over the last year. Indeed, a similar situation occurred for another couple, Peter and Penelope Duff, in March 2009. The Duff’s were a well-to-do couple who lived in Bath, England (where I am faculty member in the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath). They were both suffering from terminal diseases and chose to end their lives at Dignitas.

What emerges from all of these cases is an often overlooked point and an issue that I think deserves more attention. The services offered at Dignitas are not free and each assisted death costs roughly $6,750 US dollars (approx. 4,100 British Pounds or 4,800 Euros). I mention the cost, which will most certainly strike many readers as crass, precisely because choosing to die in a less-than-violent manner is increasingly becoming an option only for the affluent. The debate in the UK over assisted suicide absolutely taps into the ongoing debates about social class and it is apparent that individuals with access to the necessary funds will make their way to Dignitas.

The Guardian newspaper maintains an extremely valuable news archive on Assisted Suicide and I would suggest that all Death Reference Desk readers spend some time looking through the articles.

Interestingly enough, as debates about changing the UK’s laws on assisted suicide go on and on, two American states are often used as models. Both Oregon and Washington State have Death with Dignity Act laws and the Oregon law is often cited (and used) as a leading example of a rigorously reviewed, fair law. The Oregon Death with Dignity Act has even withstood judicial review by the United States Supreme Court (Gonzales v. Oregon 2006)

The UK’s assisted dying debate will most certainly continue as will the numbers of people choosing to die at Dignitas. This is a topic that I will also bring to the Death Reference Desk on a regular basis.