Kevorkian’s audacious attitude set him apart

COREY WILLIAMS

ED WHITE

Asso­ci­ated Press

DETROIT — Jack Kevorkian built his sui­cide machine with parts gath­ered from flea mar­kets and stashed it in a rusty Volk­swa­gen van.

But it was Kevorkian’s auda­cious atti­tude that set him apart in the debate over doctor-assisted sui­cide. The retired pathol­o­gist who said he over­saw the deaths of 130 gravely ill peo­ple burned state orders against him, showed up at court in cos­tume and dared author­i­ties to stop him or make his actions legal. He didn’t give up until he was sent to prison.

The 83-year-old Kevorkian died Fri­day at a Michi­gan hos­pi­tal with­out seek­ing the kind of “planned death” that he once offered to oth­ers. He insisted sui­cide with the help of a med­ical pro­fes­sional was a civil right.

His gaunt, hollow-cheeked appear­ance gave him a ghoul­ish, almost cadav­er­ous look and helped earn him the nick­name “Dr. Death.” But Kevorkian likened him­self to Mar­tin Luther King and Gandhi and called physi­cians who didn’t sup­port him “hyp­o­critic oafs.”

“Some­body has to do some­thing for suf­fer­ing human­ity,” he once said. “I put myself in my patients’ place. This is some­thing I would want.”

Kevorkian jabbed his fin­ger in the air as he pub­licly mocked politi­cians and reli­gious lead­ers. He was a mag­net for the news media, once talk­ing to reporters with his head and wrists restrained in a medieval-style stock.

His efforts put the med­ical estab­lish­ment in knots: Here was a doc­tor admit­ting he had helped peo­ple die and urg­ing oth­ers in the pro­fes­sion to do the same.

Kevorkian died at William Beau­mont Hos­pi­tal in Royal Oak, where he had been hos­pi­tal­ized since May 18 with pneu­mo­nia and kid­ney prob­lems. He suf­fered from a blood clot that trav­eled up from his leg, accord­ing to attor­ney Mayer Mor­gan­roth, who was present and said his friend was “totally in peace, not in pain.”

“His med­ical direc­tive was not to be given any CPR or con­tin­u­ing life pro­gram.” Mor­gan­roth said.

Kevorkian’s flam­boy­ant for­mer attor­ney, Geof­frey Fieger, believes Kevorkian would have taken advan­tage of doctor-assisted sui­cide if it had been available.

“If he had enough strength to do some­thing about it, he would have,” Fieger said Fri­day. “Had he been able to go home, Jack Kevorkian prob­a­bly would not have allowed him­self to go back to the hospital.”

The for­mer pros­e­cu­tor whose office con­victed Kevorkian of second-degree mur­der said he found a trace of hypocrisy in Kevorkian’s death.

“I assumed that some­day he’d com­mit sui­cide and tape it and air it for the world to see,” said David Gor­cyca, who over­saw pros­e­cu­tions in the Detroit sub­urbs of Oak­land County

Despite Kevorkian’s relent­less efforts in the 1990s, few states made physician-assisted sui­cide legal. Laws took effect in Ore­gon in 1997 and Wash­ing­ton state in 2009, and a 2009 Mon­tana Supreme Court rul­ing effec­tively legal­ized the prac­tice in that state.

L. Brooks Pat­ter­son, another for­mer pros­e­cu­tor and the county exec­u­tive in Oak­land County, described Kevorkian as an “affa­ble guy” but said his tac­tics hurt his cause.

“I don’t think he was the right ambas­sador to rep­re­sent the issue,” Pat­ter­son said. “It was the law be damned with him. The issue would have been bet­ter debated in a more seri­ous arena than in the back of Jack’s van. … It was a sideshow. Help­ing peo­ple com­mit sui­cide in the back of a van is not dying with dignity.”

Those who sought Kevorkian’s help typ­i­cally suf­fered from can­cer, Lou Gehrig’s dis­ease, mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis or paralysis.

He cat­a­pulted into the pub­lic eye in 1990 when he used his machine to inject lethal drugs into an Alzheimer’s patient. He often left the bod­ies at emer­gency rooms or motels.

For much of the decade, he escaped legal efforts to stop him. His first four tri­als, all on assisted-suicide charges, resulted in three acquit­tals and one mis­trial. Mur­der charges in Kevorkian’s first cases were thrown out because Michi­gan had no law against assisted sui­cide. The Leg­is­la­ture wrote one in response. He also was stripped of his med­ical license.

Devo­tees filled court­rooms wear­ing “I Back Jack” but­tons. Crit­ics ques­tioned his headline-grabbing meth­ods, which were aided by Fieger, until the two parted ways before the 1999 trial in which he was sent to prison for eight years.

“The issue’s got to be raised to the level where it is finally decided,” Kevorkian said dur­ing a broad­cast of CBS’ “60 Min­utes” that aired the video­taped death of Thomas Youk, a 52-year-old man with Lou Gehrig’s disease.

He chal­lenged pros­e­cu­tors to charge him again, and they obliged with second-degree mur­der charges.

Kevorkian acted as his own lawyer. In his clos­ing argu­ment, he said some acts “by sheer com­mon sense are not crimes.”

“Just look at me,” he told jurors. “Hon­estly now, do you see a crim­i­nal? Do you see a murderer?”

Kevorkian’s ulti­mate goal was to estab­lish “obito­ri­ums” where peo­ple would go to die. Doc­tors there could har­vest organs and per­form med­ical exper­i­ments dur­ing the sui­cide process. Such exper­i­ments would be “entirely eth­i­cal spin­offs” of sui­cide, he wrote in his 1991 book “Pre­scrip­tion: Medi­cide — The Good­ness of Planned Death.”

In a rare tele­vised inter­view from prison in 2005, Kevorkian told MSNBC he regret­ted “a lit­tle” the actions that put him there.

“It was dis­ap­point­ing because what I did turned out to be in vain. … And my only regret was not hav­ing done it through the legal sys­tem, through leg­is­la­tion, pos­si­bly,” he said.

Kevorkian was freed in June 2007 after serv­ing eight years of a 10– to 25-year sen­tence. His lawyers said he suf­fered from hepati­tis C, dia­betes and other prob­lems, and Kevorkian promised in affi­davits that he would not assist in any more sui­cides if released.

Tina Allerel­lie became a fierce critic after her 34-year-old sis­ter, Karen Shoff­stall, turned to Kevorkian in 1997. She said Shoff­stall, who suf­fered from mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis, was strug­gling with depres­sion and fear but could have lived for years longer.

Kevorkian’s intent “has always been to gain noto­ri­ety,” Allerel­lie said in 2007.

In 2008, Kevorkian ran for Con­gress as an inde­pen­dent, receiv­ing just 2.7 per­cent of the vote in his sub­ur­ban Detroit dis­trict. He said his expe­ri­ence showed the party sys­tem was “cor­rupt” and “has to be com­pletely overhauled.”

Born in 1928, in the Detroit sub­urb of Pon­tiac, Kevorkian grad­u­ated from the Uni­ver­sity of Michigan’s med­ical school in 1952 and went into pathology.

He said he first became inter­ested in euthana­sia dur­ing his intern­ship year when he watched a middle-aged woman die of can­cer. She was so ema­ci­ated, her sag­ging, dis­col­ored skin “cov­ered her bones like a cheap, wrin­kled frock,” Kevorkian wrote.

On June 4, 1990, he drove his van to a secluded park north of Detroit. After the Alzheimer’s patient, 54-year-old Janet Adkins of Port­land, Ore., met him there, he inserted a nee­dle into her arm. When she was ready, she flipped the switch that began a flow of lethal drugs.

He later switched from his device to can­is­ters of car­bon monox­ide, again insist­ing patients take the final step by remov­ing a clamp that released the deadly gas to a face mask.

Kevorkian’s life story became the sub­ject of the 2010 HBO movie “You Don’t Know Jack,” which earned actor Al Pacino Emmy and Golden Globe Awards for his por­trayal of Kevorkian. Pacino paid trib­ute to Kevorkian dur­ing his Emmy accep­tance speech and rec­og­nized the for­mer doc­tor, who sat smil­ing in the audience.

Pacino said dur­ing the speech that it was a plea­sure to “try to por­tray some­one as bril­liant and inter­est­ing and unique” as Kevorkian and a “plea­sure to know him.”

Kevorkian him­self said he liked the movie and enjoyed the atten­tion it gen­er­ated. But he doubted it would inspire much action by a new gen­er­a­tion of assisted-suicide advocates.

“You’ll hear peo­ple say, ‘Well, it’s in the news again, it’s time for dis­cussing this fur­ther.’ No, it isn’t. It’s been dis­cussed to death,” he told The Asso­ci­ated Press. “There’s noth­ing new to say about it. It’s a legit­i­mate, eth­i­cal med­ical prac­tice as it was in ancient Rome and Greece.”

Kevorkian’s fame also made him fod­der for late-night come­di­ans’ mono­logues and sit­coms. His name became cul­tural short­hand for jokes about has­ten­ing the end of life.

Even admir­ers couldn’t resist. Adam Mazer, the Emmy-winning writer for “You Don’t Know Jack,” got off one of the best lines of the 2010 Emmy telecast.

“I’m grate­ful you’re my friend,” Mazer said, look­ing out at Kevorkian. “I’m even more grate­ful you’re not my physician.”

Posted by AP News on Jun 4 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.