A parole board in New Zealand has turned down an application by a convicted euthanasia campaigner to serve a prison sentence at home, saying she failed to admit she was wrong in trying to kill her mother and would likely try to influence others to break the law. The decision came as shock to Lesley Martin, who found it "a bit difficult to understand," her husband Warren Fulljames said Thursday. Fulljames, who was present at the board hearing this week, declined to comment further until he had the chance to discuss the decision with his wife.
The development means Martin, a former intensive-care nurse, will probably have to serve the rest of her 15-month jail term in prison in Wellington. The ruling, a copy of which was provided by the board Thursday, said Martin was not a suitable candidate for home detention because of the nature of her crime and "the unrealistic prospect of rehabilitation."
The parole board said she was in a position to influence others and "an undue risk to the community," noting that she stood by earlier comment that she "would do the same again or help others do the same."
The board did leave open the possibility that Martin could reapply for home detention, but only on condition that she accept, without qualification, "the impropriety of breaking the law" and undertake to refrain from public or media activity until her release date.
Joy Martin, a 69-year-old cancer sufferer, died in 1999, a day after her daughter tried to kill her by injecting her with morphine and smothering her. Post-mortem findings were inconclusive, and a police investigation was suspended.
Three years later, however, Martin emerged as New Zealand's most prominent advocate for euthanasia when she self-published a book in which she described how she tried to end her mother's life. As intended, the book rekindled the debate about legalizing assisted suicide and also led to a reopening of the police inquiry.
After Martin was charged and while awaiting trial, she campaigned around New Zealand for changes to the country's laws on euthanasia.
A close associate of Australia's controversial euthanasia advocate, Dr. Philip Nitschke, she established a New Zealand branch of Nitschke's Exit organization. Martin was eventually found guilty of trying to kill her mother by injecting her with morphine, although not guilty on a second charge of trying to suffocate her with a pillow.
A High Court Judge last April sentenced her to 15 months' imprisonment, saying she had displayed no remorse and appeared to think she was above the law. Exit New Zealand spokesman Bruce Corney said Thursday the organization was "extremely disappointed" at the board decision.
"It appears that once again the justice system in New Zealand has decided to make an example of Lesley as they hide behind the parliamentarians who are too afraid to address end-of-life decisions... and put in place some humane legislation based around freedom of choice," he said.
Corney also took issue with the board's condition that Martin not do public campaigning work if she wanted to reapply for home detention. "New Zealand prides itself on freedom of speech as a basic right," he said.
The decision to turn down Martin's application is the latest in a series of setbacks for the pro-euthanasia movement in New Zealand, following Martin's conviction and, last year, the narrow defeat in parliament of legislation that would have legalized euthanasia under specified conditions.
But neither euthanasia advocates nor their opponents believe the battle is over.
"Exit New Zealand and all supporters of voluntary euthanasia legislation in New Zealand and around the world will be more motivated than ever now to continue driving forward towards legislative change," Corney said.
Family Life International (FLI) director Colleen Bayer, who has attended meetings around the country of euthanasia campaigners - including Martin and Nitschke - said Thursday although they seemed to have "a small following," that did not mean the issue was not likely to grow.
"It's a very small lobby group in New Zealand, but... if you look at trends throughout the Western world, it's not dead and buried by any means. I think we'll see another resurgence of the lobbying." Bayer said the parole board's decision was a wise one.
"Lesley Martin had made it very clear that she has an intention, a pre-determined agenda. She has set herself up as a proponent of euthanasia. The judgment that has been made is very sound."
FLI has printed booklets on euthanasia and has distributed 20,000 copies around the country, sending them to every national lawmaker and other decision-makers too.
Bayer said the organization had seen a growth in the number of elderly people getting in touch and asking for help because of their concerns about how they may be treated should they require hospital care. Of particular concern is the prospect that medical staff may withhold food and water, "allowing them to starve to death."
"They do feel fearful that they won't be taken care of properly and in accordance with their wishes. What they are seeing on television programs is a softening of language, preparing people [for acceptance of euthanasia]."
FLI is drawing up "living will" documents for such people, Bayer said.
Fr. Michael McCabe, the director of a Catholic bioethics organization in Wellington, said Thursday the heart of the debate should be "how do we care for the dying, how do we bind them into the community and care for them in their physical pain and spiritual pain as well." Hospices offering palliative care were clearly the solution, he said, but the Martin case highlighted how much more work was needed to educate people about what was available.
Martin's mother had terminal cancer, and her daughter told the court earlier she had been acting on a promise that she would prevent her from having to endure a slow and painful death.
"There is a very real fear of pain and suffering," McCabe. "People look ahead and want a pre-emptive strike against any form of suffering. But with reassurance, when their needs are met, clearly they don't want to short-circuit life. They want to choose life, because their quality of life has been improved."
Queensland police will not lay charges over the death of euthanasia campaigner Nancy Crick because of a lack of evidence. The decision ends an anxious wait for 21 witnesses who were at Mrs Crick's bedside when she took her life on the Gold Coast in May 2002. Family and friends described the decision as a significant step forward in the campaign for those terminally ill or suffering to be allowed to take their life with loved ones by their side.
"I'm out of jail," said Mrs Crick's son Daryle as he proposed an emotional toast to his mother.
"My own mother's death was lovely. It was just beautiful. She didn't want anyone to get in trouble and no one is."
Mrs Crick, 69, became a national figure in the euthanasia movement when she said her life was not worth living because of the effects of bowel cancer and its treatment. An autopsy later revealed she did not have cancer when she committed suicide.
Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson said yesterday that after an investigation of great complexity the Crick file would be handed to the coroner. He said the police investigation was hampered by a lack of co-operation from witnesses.
"They didn't want to be interviewed by us and refused to be interviewed by us," Mr Atkinson told journalists. "I'm not in a position to say to you that any of the people who were present when Mrs Crick took her own life assisted her to do that or specifically did not assist her to do that. What I'm saying is that we don't have sufficient evidence for a charge against any person." Mr Atkinson did not rule out the possibility of charges in the future if further information came to light, although he said it was unlikely.
Under the Queensland Criminal Code anyone aiding a suicide faces life imprisonment. Mr Atkinson said that he doubted any precedent had been set and believed if a similar incident occurred police would be obliged to investigate.
Euthanasia campaigner Philip Nitschke said the decision to not lay charges showed "common sense" had prevailed.
AUSTRALIAN euthanasia doctor Philip Nitschke has launched his suicide pill, and a film about the suicide of a healthy 79-year-old Perth woman, in the US. The controversial documentary tells the story of Dr Nitschke's involvement with Lisette Nigot, a retired academic who wanted to die before she turned 80, despite being healthy. It premiered at the American Film Institute's festival SilverDocos in Washington DC in front of an audience of about 100 people last night.
Dr Nitschke said the audience's response to the documentary was positive and they expressed "almost identical" views to Australians about euthanasia.
"There's not a lot of difference between Australia and the United States," Dr Nitschke said. "People are sick of waiting for politicians to bring out legislation (to deal with euthanasia)." He said many Americans, like Australians, wanted the right to determine when and how they died without politicians blocking the way.
Dr Nitschke also will speak to several right-to-die groups in Washington DC about a suicide pill he has developed to help people take their own lives. He said the so-called Peaceful Pill could be made in a household kitchen from easily-accessible items such as nicotine and alcohol.
"If you drink it you will go to sleep and you will die," he said.
The film about Ms Nigot, titled Mademoiselle and the Doctor, already has been shown at the Sydney Film Festival and will feature in the Melbourne Film Festival next month, Dr Nitschke said. He said the documentary pushed the right-to-die debate to a new level, and he conceded it would put offside many people who may have supported euthanasia for the terminally ill. Dr Nitschke said he initially struggled to understand Ms Nigot's desire to die when she approached him for help three years ago.
She died in November, 2002.
"I kept trying to tell her that she should write a book or take a cruise," he said. "Most of the people I see are very, very sick and I can understand them wanting to die. But at a fundamental level I believe in the idea that a person's life is their own and they should have the right to dispose of it any way they want."
The subject of Janine Hosking's documentary Mademoiselle and the Doctor is intelligent, charming and, at 79, as fit as a fiddle. She is also in the process of planning her own death.
Hosking's film, screening as part of the 51st Sydney Film Festival, follows the final weeks of Lisette Nigot, a healthy Frenchwoman living in Perth who wants to die before turning 80. The film documents her decision and the involvement of euthanasia activist Philip Nitschke.
Hosking admits the topic of her film is controversial, but says she was drawn by Nigot's character. "She just captured me absolutely. Why is she thinking like this? I really, really liked her and I found it extraordinarily sad that she carried it through," Hosking said. "But that doesn't lessen her right to do it, in my eyes."
Dr Nitschke said Nigot's case had had a profound impact on him. "She challenged my concept that this [euthanasia] was reserved for someone that was seriously ill," he said.
"My philosophical position is, yes, mature, rational people over a certain age - which remains undefined - should have access to the ways and means of a peaceful death. And that's all people, not just sick people."
At the debut screening of the documentary yesterday, Hosking and Dr Nitschke fielded questions about the "peaceful pill" that can be manufactured at home and bring about painless death. In the audience was NSW Greens upper house MP Ian Cohen, whose bill advocating voluntary euthanasia for the terminally ill was defeated last year.
Anyone found guilty of assisting a person's suicide can face a long jail term, and Dr Nitschke admitted he was concerned the film could lead to his arrest.
"Yes, it worries me," he said. "The safe thing is to do nothing - but if you want to see change in society, there's obviously a need at times to move closer to the cliff and take some risks."
The Queensland Police Service is still considering whether to lay charges against the 21 people who witnessed the 2002 suicide of Gold Coast woman Nancy Crick.
Mademoiselle and the Doctor is screened again at 4.35pm today at the State Theatre as part of the Sydney Film Festival.
Euthanasia campaigner Philip Nitschke and a team of advisers have developed a pill they say can provide a peaceful, reliable and legal death. Trials have begun on the pill, which is made from readily available ingredients such as nicotine and alcohol, and takes only days to make in an average kitchen. Speaking in Darwin, Dr Nitschke said yesterday that pressure to develop the pill had been relentless since the world's first voluntary euthanasia law was overturned in the Northern Territory.
"No government will be able to bring itself to ban these substances, so I think the process is safe," Dr Nitschke said. "And if people can do it all themselves, with no help, there is no breach of the law."
Dr Nitschke said details on the manufacturing process would be restricted to Exit Australia, an organisation with about 3000 members. There are no prerequisites for joining the organisation, whose members have an average age of 75.
"We are not about to put (instructions) up on a website or anything like that," Dr Nitschke said. "It will be something that is only available to our members," he said.
Dr Nitschke said that to his knowledge, no one had as yet taken the pill, which he described as "theoretically OK". "We are certainly not saying this product is the best or final one," he said.
Asked what would happen after the trials, which are designed to perfect and simplify the process of making the pill, Dr Nitschke said the organisation would talk to members about it. "And at some stage, knowing the risk of anything new like this, someone will go ahead and take it," he said. "We are not about to encourage anyone to do that, obviously."
Dr Nitschke said the pill had been developed mostly in his own kitchen in Darwin with the help of many people, including retired chemists. "If I go and make it and give it to someone I will be assisting their suicide and I will be in prison for the rest of my life," he said.
"You have got to do it yourself. And that is why all the emphasis has gone into making a process which is straightforward enough that any competent person with reasonable ability and an average kitchen could easily manufacture it themselves. That is not a crime." Dr Nitschke said many of Exit's members felt they did not have time to wait for politicians to legalise euthanasia.
"One of the options right now is that you can go out and you can do this with a pill which we believe... will give you a reliable and peaceful death," he said.
Last year authorities at Sydney airport confiscated from Dr Nitschke a prototype death machine that generates carbon monoxide, which he had planned to take to the United States.
An Australian woman who committed suicide two years ago surrounded by supporters and euthanasia activists was not dying of cancer at the time of her death, an official post-mortem report has confirmed. The country's leading euthanasia campaigner, who knew ahead of Nancy Crick's death that she was cancer-free but did not make that public, said in response to the report's release that the point was immaterial.
"To Nancy's mind it didn't really matter, and I guess to my mind it didn't matter either," Dr. Philip Nitschke told a commercial television channel. Nitschke advised Crick in the weeks leading up to the day she took a lethal barbiturate on May 22, 2002, although he was not one of the 21 people with her when she died, having decided to absent himself for legal reasons.
The 69-year-old resident of Queensland state used an Internet homepage to record her final months and her intention to kill herself at an undisclosed time, in a conscious bid to promote the campaign for voluntary euthanasia. According to the Web site, she was "terminally ill," and that was the way her supporters characterized her. Neither Crick nor Nitschke said publicly that the bowel cancer she suffered from earlier had evidently been successfully removed during several bouts of surgery.
After she died, Nitschke acknowledged in an interview with CNSNews.com that he had known beforehand that she seemed to be cancer-free.
The release in recent days, at her family's request, of the official autopsy result has focused renewed attention on the case. Queensland police said Wednesday a decision on whether anyone would be prosecuted was just days away.
Pro-lifers reiterated their concerns about the dangers involved in legalizing euthanasia. Alan Baker, vice-president of the Queensland Right-to-Life Association, said Wednesday that making euthanasia available would place at risk elderly, vulnerable people, who might come under indirect pressure from families or society to end their lives prematurely.
But as Nitschke's reaction to Crick's death showed, he said, "the scope of the euthanasia movement is not restricted to the terminally ill. It extends to anyone who is dissatisfied with his or her life." Baker said pro-lifers supported the concept of palliative care, allowing people to "die with dignity."
Physical, emotional and spiritual needs should be provided by doctors, nurses, counselors and pastors, "so that people at the end of their lives can be given the help and support and care and love that they need."
A few weeks before her death, Crick recorded on her Web site that she had decided to give palliative care a chance, and checked into a private Catholic hospital for a week. She came out saying the pain had been eased, but she was keeping her options open.
Euthanasia campaigner John Edge, one of the 21 people who witnessed Crick's death, agreed in a phone interview Wednesday that the palliative care had helped. Crick had acknowledged that the care had reduced the level of pain, and helped her to put on a little weight, but complained that the medication left her in a daze.
"I spend most my time sleeping. I walk into walls; I stumble. What sort of a life is this?" he quoted her as saying. Edge said that Crick felt the question of the cancer was academic. Although doctors said they had removed it, "she was not convinced that it wasn't still active."
"To her, whether she had cancer or whether it [the pain] was coming as the result of surgery didn't matter to her," Edge said. "She just wanted peace, and the only way she could see she would get peace was to end her life."
As the convenor of the local voluntary euthanasia support group and one who offered "hands-on help" with the Web site, Edge said he was probably the most likely of the 21 supporters to face criminal charges. Even so, he said release of the autopsy report was "a step in the right direction," as he and others involved hoped the case might now be settled.
A spokesman for the Queensland Police Service said Wednesday a review into the Crick case was being wrapped up and the police commissioner indicated he would be making a decision as early as next week. He said the post-mortem results, which had long been known to the police, did not in themselves affect the inquiry.
"The reason why she took her life is not the issue. The only matter for investigation is whether someone broke the law in assisting her in some way," he said.
"There's a range of possibilities. Just witnessing her death or having knowledge of what she intended to do is not necessarily an offense in itself, but actively assisting her could be an offense." The spokesman said the investigation had been held up because it was "a very complex case." A number of those present at her bedside had not been available for questioning.
"Obviously if full and frank interviews were given by everybody involved, it may well have been this could have been resolved earlier."
Lawyers said earlier that Queensland law provided for life jail terms for anyone who advises, counsels or assists someone to take his life.
Apart from actively helping a suicide, one issue under consideration is whether merely being with someone at the time provides him with psychological support, and could therefore be a indictable offense.
Australia's long running debate on euthanasia has entered a new phase following international evidence which shows terminal sedation is just as effective. Doctors in the Netherlands, the first country in the world to legalise euthanasia, no longer see a medical need for euthanasia due to improvements in palliative care and pain relief.
"Most doctors no longer see euthanasia as a medical necessity for fighting unbearable suffering," said author of the study Bernardus Crul, from the pain control centre of Nijmegan University. Over 1,500 Dutch doctors were asked their opinion of terminal sedation, otherwise known as slow euthanasia, and the majority said they preferred it over more drastic forms of euthanasia. But the results of the survey are being treated cautiously by both pro- and anti-euthanasia campaigners in Australia.
"Doctors like medicalising the issue and this idea of keeping a person unconscious for some arbitrary period of time before they die fits within their concept of what might be described as a natural process," explained prominent pro-euthanasia campaigner Dr Philip Nitschke.
Terminal sedation, under which all food, treatment and water are withheld from a sedated terminally ill patient, has been proposed as an alternative for countries like Australia where euthanasia is illegal.
Dr Nitschke has argued that while slow euthanasia might be a more palatable experience for doctors, it certainly did not work in the best interest of the patient.
"No-one has ever come to my workshops and said I want to spend five days dying slowly," he said.
"Doctors in Australia are doing it now but they would never say they are ending the patient's life, they would always say that they're treating the patient's pain - as a way of getting around the law."
Like Dr Nitschke, but at the opposite end of the debate, NSW President of Doctors For Life Dr Catherine Lennon said terminal sedation was a cruel way for people to die.
"There is absolutely no medical need for euthanasia - which is what this is," she said. Dr Lennon said that only "unethical doctors" in Australian practised terminal sedation, and that she warned her patients accordingly.
"I tell them to watch out for their relatives and friends in hospital to make sure they are still being given food and fluids."
Euthanasia opponents in the United States have warned Australian "right-to-die" activist Philip Nitschke that he risks breaking the law if he tries to establish a presence in the country to promote his controversial suicide devices. Nitschke said this week he was looking into the possibility of setting up a North American affiliate of his Exit Australia organization, after the Australian government moved to outlaw the use of the Internet to promote suicide. The draft legislation will prevent him from using a website hosted in Australia to promote, counsel or incite suicide, or provide instruction on how to commit suicide.
The government move follows the tightening of Australian customs regulations to ban the importation of devices designed to facilitate suicide and associated documentation. It's widely believed in Australia that both the customs regulations and the pending Internet law were drawn up specifically to target Exit Australia and Nitschke, who has been dubbed "Australia's Dr. Death" for his many and varied efforts to promote euthanasia.
One of the world's leading euthanasia campaigners, Australian doctor Philip Nitschke, plans to set up a presence in North America to circumvent legislation in his home country that would outlaw his use of the Internet to show people how to commit suicide.
Australia's federal government has drafted a bill designed to prevent the use of the Internet and other telecommunications media for criminal activities. Initially aimed at combating child pornography and related offenses, the legislation now also seeks to prevent use of the Internet to post material that "directly or indirectly, promotes, counsels or incites suicide, or provides instruction on how to commit suicide."
Nitschke believes the bill is specifically targeting him and his organization, Exit Australia, saying in a phone interview Thursday it had been "drafted to make my life more difficult" and stifle public debate on euthanasia. He also complained about the fact that the promotion of suicide provisions had been added to a bill dealing mainly with child sex abuse.
"Suddenly, with very little notice, they've added in this assisted suicide section. It makes it quite difficult if we're going to be portrayed as being an organization that has similarities to those who would access child pornography."
He saw the association of euthanasia with pedophilia as an attempt by the government "to discredit the voluntary euthanasia movement."
Nitschke has designed a range of devices to help people kill themselves. Labeled "death machines" by critics, and "alternative technology means of self deliverance" by Nitschke, the devices include the Exit Bag (a plastic bag with drawstring, modified for comfort and easy use), the COGenie (a simple machine incorporating a face mask and supply of carbon monoxide gas), and the Peaceful Pill (a suicide concoction, made at home to a prescribed recipe).
The Internet has played an important role in his work.
"The Internet provides a means of spreading the information that empowers those wishing to exercise control at the time of death," he said in a magazine interview in 2001.
"As many supporters of voluntary euthanasia become increasingly disenchanted with the progress toward a legislative solution, a rapidly growing subset of the movement is developing and disseminating the information [online] that will effectively make legislation irrelevant," he said at the time.
Nitschke said Thursday the "broad and general nature" of the proposed legislation in Australia would make it very difficult for his group to function. He voiced hope that federal elections in Australia, due late this year, may take the pressure off. If the now official opposition Labor Party wins, the new government may send the legislation back to a committee, where the opposition of two smaller parties would probably help to kill it. But if the bill does pass, "we would soon be in legal difficulty." Because of this, Nitschke said he was looking into moving the website offshore.
"The easiest way to do that would be to have it operating through an affiliate organization in North America." His group was also linking up with "like-minded" organizations abroad, to establish an international alliance, Exit International.
He did not elaborate further on the plans, other to say he hoped to have Exit North America up and running by the end of the year, and had been in talks with lawyers in the United States.
Nitschke would be wise to avoid Canada, Alex Schadenberg of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition in Ontario said Wednesday night.
"In Canada, he'd find himself in trouble." Schadenberg noted that a woman will be going on trial in Canada in September, charged with counseling and aiding two suicides.
"Her counseling was by email," he said. "If they catch you counseling either by word or by communication in any way, it breaks the law, and you're subject to 14 years' imprisonment."
Schadenberg said most people wouldn't have any idea how to kill themselves, but activists like Nitschke were making very specific information available online.
"They're selling [suicide] devices and they're selling instructions. That's a serious problem."
Suicidal people needed help, and many were suffering from treatable depression, he said. "You want to help people - you don't want people to kill themselves. A caring society doesn't do that to people."
Nitschke and other campaigners were buoyed this week by a court decision in Australia's state of Tasmania to hand down a suspended jail sentence to a man who helped his elderly mother die in 2002.
Judge Peter Underwood said John Godfrey had been acting out of love and compassion when he helped the 88-year-old kill herself by providing her with a paste of sleeping pills, whiskey and plastic bags with which to suffocate herself.
Godfrey was given a 12-month suspended sentence for a crime which carries a maximum penalty of 21 years in jail. Euthanasia advocates were especially pleased by the judge's comment that "it might be said that those who wish to end their life but are physically unable to do so, are discriminated against by reason of their physical disability."
"It's the first time I've ever heard anyone in the judiciary draw attention to the fact that existing legislation, apart from being inadequate, also discriminates against the elderly and against the sick," Nitschke said.
But Mary Joseph of the Australian Federation of Right to Life Associations said the Tasmanian judge's "suggestion that assisting a suicide can be rational and have some justification as an act of last resort undermines the protection of the law for vulnerable suicidal people."
"It says that sometimes people's lives are no longer of value and can rationally be extinguished with assistance - a dangerous notion."
Joseph said chronically or terminally-ill patients could be vulnerable to depression and suicidal feelings. They needed "love, support, counseling and effective pain management - not help to kill themselves." Schadenberg also took issue with the judge's reasoning about discrimination.
"You don't have a right to suicide," he said. "Without a right to suicide being established [in law], it's a ridiculous court decision."
While unlikely to be as controversial as the banned Ken Park last year, the Australian euthanasia documentary 'The Mademoiselle and the Doctor' is likely to stir debate. Directed by Janine Hosking, it shows the assisted death of Lisette Nigot, 79. The euthanasia campaigner Dr Philip Nitschke, who features in the film, will be a festival guest.
Exit International director Philip Nitschke says appealing shows the strength of Lesley Martin's character
Australia's so-called 'Dr Death' says he is pleased Lesley Martin is appealing her conviction and sentence.
Martin will file appeals in the next few days against her conviction for attempting to murder her terminally ill mother and her 15-month prison sentence.
Exit International director Philip Nitschke says appealing shows the strength of Martin's character. His response to comments that she is arrogant is that history is replete with people who challenged bad laws. He says judges said similar things to suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst. At her sentencing on Friday, Justice Wild said Lesley Martin had consistently displayed arrogance and a lack of remorse.
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