X-Message-Number: 7065
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1996 21:27:21 -0700
From: David Brandt-Erichsen <>
Subject: California case update

WASHINGTON, Oct. 21 (UPI) -- The Supreme Court Monday refused a request by
California to speed up review of a lower-court ruling in Los Angeles that
recognizes an individual's right to choose the manner of his or her own
death, and the right to be assisted in suicide by a physician.

The case at one time included Dr. Jack Kevorkian, Michigan's "Doctor Death,"
who has attended at least 40 assisted suicides.

Though Monday's action means there will be no expedited review, the justices
could grant ordinary review in the case, brought by an unnamed man with
AIDS, this term.

And the action does not affect the Supreme Court's decision earlier to hear
argument on the same issues in cases out of Washington state and New York.

California law does not ban suicide and also permits an individual to
require the withdrawal of life-sustaining medical equipment. But state law
also bans assisted suicide.

"John Doe," a man in his 30s, was first diagnosed as HIV-positive in July
1984, and as having full-blown AIDS on Jan. 1, 1993.

Doe was advised by his doctor "that his condition is terminal, though the
exact amount of time left to him is necessarily an estimate, according to
court records.

The man is also "mentally competent and aware of the nature of his diseases
and likely progress," a lower court ruled.

"...John Doe contends that he has 'seen his peers die without dignity and in
horrible pain, and he does not want that fate to befall him," the court
record said.  "John Doe wishes to obtain physician aid in dying."

Doe filed a complaint in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles in October 1994
claiming state law banning assisted suicide is unconstitutional.

His complaint was combined with one from Kevorkian, who was fighting the
revocation of his license to practice medicine in California.

Relying on a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in a Washington state
case, U.S. District Judge Consuelo Marshall in Los Angeles ruled for Doe,
though the judge said Kevorkian had no standing to bring suit and the doctor
was removed from the case.

Marshall rejected Supreme Court precedent on challenging a state law,
instead saying that there is a "similarity between the liberty interests in
abortion and assisted suicide."

Applying Supreme Court precedent on challenging state restrictions to
abortion, Marshall ruled that the California law banning assisted suicide
violated the due process, or fair hearing, provisions of the 14th Amendment.

But Marshall stayed the ruling until it could be appealed to the 9th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals or until the Supreme Court could consider it.

The appellate court put the appeal on its October docket.

Since the case began, however, the Supreme Court has agreed to review the
issue of whether someone has a constitutional right to die and whether
states have the right to ban assisted suicide. The justices will hear
argument later this term in the Washington state case and on a less-sweeping
decision that invalidated New York's ban on assisted suicide.

With that as background, both sides in the "John Doe" Los Angeles case have
asked the Supreme Court for expedited review of the California ban.

(No. 96-531, Lungren vs. Doe; and 96-547, Doe vs. Lundgren)


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