Assisted suicide campaigners await supreme court verdict on right to die
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Version 0 of 1. Campaigners for the right to assisted suicide will learn on Wednesday whether the ban on doctors helping to end the lives of their patients can be lifted. The supreme court will deliver its verdict this morning on two related cases brought by men who are severely ill but require medical assistance in order to die. The legal challenges have been brought by Paul Lamb, who suffered catastrophic injuries after a car accident, Jane Nicklinson, the widow of the right-to-die campaigner Tony, and a claimant known only as AM or "Martin". Nine of the 12 justices on the supreme court sat on the bench considering the appeals, a sign of the legal sensitivities surrounding the claims. In the court of appeal, the former lord chief justice, Lord Judge, declared such issues were a matter for parliament and that: "the law relating to assisting suicide cannot be changed by judicial decision". Paul Lamb, 58, who needs 24-hour care, is supporting the case originally brought by Tony Nicklinson, a sufferer of "locked-in syndrome" who died in 2012, a week after losing his high court euthanasia battle. Their lawyers argue that the prohibition on assisted suicide in the Suicide Act 1961 is incompatible with rights to respect for private and family life as contained in article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights. A defence of necessity, they maintain, exists making it lawful for a doctor to assist, or to have assisted, in the suicide of people who have made a voluntary, clear, settled and informed wish to end their lives but were unable to do so on their own. Lamb experiences constant pain and is constantly on morphine. His condition is, under present medical knowledge, irreversible and he wishes to end his life with the assistance of a medical professional. Martin is 49,a man who, in August 2008 at the age of 43, suffered a brainstem stroke that left him unable to speak and virtually unable to move. He also wishes to commit suicide, but is unable to do so without assistance. His legal challenge is slightly different. Since February 2010, when the director of public prosecutions (DPP) guidelines were changed, friends and close family members who take individuals to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland for assisted dying no longer face being charged. However, Martin's friends and family are unwilling to provide such help so he would have to rely on others. As the legal guidelines now stand, anyone else helping him would be at risk of criminal prosecution. Martin's lawyers says that the DPP's guidelines should be rewritten because they interfere with his article 8 rights and make the consequences of a person encouraging or assisting him to commit suicide "insufficiently foreseeable". Under the Suicide Act 1961, helping someone end their life is a crime punishable by up to 14 years in prison. A number of organisations have intervened in the case, including Dignity in Dying, the British Humanist Association and Care Not Killing. Lord Falconer, a former Lord Chancellor, has introduced a private member's bill into the House of Lords aimed at legalising assisted dying. It would permit doctors to administer a lethal dose of drugs to terminally-ill patients given less than six months to live. |