THE PATH TO HELL ...

Charges may be dismissed against Williams (Tracy Kennedy, Register Citizen.com, 4/5/05)

Huntington Williams, the 74-year-old West Cornwall man who stayed with his friend John Welles when he chose to end his life, appears to be eligible for a program that could dismiss the manslaughter charge filed against him. . . .

Williams was arrested in January by state police in North Canaan for allegedly aiding in Welles’ suicide on June 11 at his West Cornwall home. Police allege Williams assisted his 67-year-old friend suffering from prostate cancer to end his life by cleaning Welles’ gun, carrying the weapon for him while Welles struggled to go outside his house with his walker and smoke his pipe, and advising him of the most effective angle to point the gun. When Williams sat down on his lawn the two shook hands and Williams walked down Welles’ driveway, according to an arrest affidavit. He heard Welles ask if he was still there, and Williams was just about to say "God Bless" when he heard the gun discharge one time, he told police. . . .

Before granting the accelerated rehabilitation program, according to the statute, Brunetti must find the crime was not of a serious nature and that he expects Welles will not offend in the future.

NPR did a story on this case this morning. The NPR correspondent reported that Welles had only recently been diagnosed, that the cancer had spread to his spine and he had been told that it was terminal, that he was in pain and that he prided himself on his self-reliance. All of the media coverage I've seen has been sympathetic to Williams, a veteran, a volunteer EMT and Welles' friend for 20 years. Obviously, Williams should be convicted and punished.

All of the facts added by the NPR story underscore why Williams deserves to be convicted. He failed his friend in the most profound way. Immediately after a terminal diagnosis, people are naturally depressed. When in pain -- which patients are too often, due to some oddities of American medical regulation and practice -- people are naturally depressed. When forced suddenly and involuntarily to change their way of life, people are naturally depressed. What Mr. Welles needed was not someone to enable his self-murder, but someone to take action for his preservation. Here, there was no counseling; as far as we know, there was no effort to get his friend relief from his physical or mental pain, other than through cleaning, loading and carrying his gun.

Finally, there is the tricky issue of self-reliance. Self-reliance is good. But allowing the community to come to our aid is also good. In Jewish terms, giving others the chance to do good, to do a mitzvah, is in itself a mitzvah. Relieving us of a burden sounds like a noble act, but the hard truth is that suicide, in the midst of plenty, is the ultimate act of solipsistic selfishness.

MORE: Barry Meislin, in the comments to another post, points to this article about Jewish law and assisted suicide:

Mordechai Halperin: Jewish law tells us that three conditions have to obtain for us to be able to withhold care from a patient. First, the patient must be terminally ill, which is defined as meaning that he or she is expected to die within six months - beyond which it is impossible to make reliable predictions. Second, the individual must be undergoing terrible suffering. And third, we know, because the patient has said so, or we are in a position to assume, that the patient does not wish to have his or her life extended. If any one of these conditions is lacking, then we are not permitted to withhold medical care.

When you say "medical care," what does that include?

I will tell you what cannot be withheld, under any circumstances, by Jewish law. The patient cannot be cut off from oxygen - that would constitute suffocation; the patient cannot be disconnected from an infusion - that would be tantamount to being deprived of water; and we cannot withhold nutrition from the patient - for that is equivalent to starvation. . . .

But doesn't Jewish law have an absolute prohibition on suicide?

In principle, suicide is forbidden, except in very specific cases. For example, a soldier who fears that he will give up secrets that could risk the lives of fellow soldiers is permitted to commit suicide. In the case of a sick person, however, the halakhah does not permit him to kill himself, but it excuses him if he does so. That is to say, it is an act that can be understood, even if it's not acceptable. This makes a very big difference. It means that the individual can undergo a normal burial in a regular cemetery. But I want to stress that nowadays, there is no reason why a person need undergo terrible pain. It may be that one reason the Dutch have the situation they do is that they don't have the same understanding of pain control that we have here, and they lack the kind of hospices that we have here for the terminally ill. It is generally clear what safe and necessary quantities of morphine are available. And giving an overdose is just murder.

We are talking in this situation about a non-Jewish woman and non-Jewish families. Would the rules of halakhah as you've described them be applied in the same way if a non-Jew were hospitalized in Israel?

Of course. There is no difference between a Jew and a non-Jew in medical situations. It is forbidden to kill either. Heaven help us if we began to make distinctions like that.

Posted by David Cohen at April 6, 2005 10:05 AM