Court: Suicide Assisters Can Inherit
This is definitely bad policy, but it was probably the right decision by the court: A Wisconsin Court of Appeals ruled that a relatives who may have assisted a suicide can still inherit from his estate. From the story:
The wife and daughter of a Wisconsin man who committed suicide can inherit his estate even if they assisted him in the act, an appeals court ruled Thursday.Wisconsin Right to Life, good people who I know very well, are absolutely correct. The problems with permitting those who assist suicide to inherent from the dead person are so obvious that I need not belabor them here.
A Wisconsin law prevents anyone who "intentionally kills" another from inheriting from the person but the District 4 Court of Appeals said that does not extend to those who assist in suicide. "A person who assists another in voluntarily and intentionally taking his or her own life is plainly not depriving the other of life," Judge Margaret Vergeront wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel. "We do not agree that 'killer' is commonly understood to mean the person who provides the means that enable another to kill himself or herself."
Wisconsin Right to Life, which opposes assisted suicide, immediately blasted the ruling, saying it gives a financial incentive for people to help relatives die prematurely...
The two admitted they drove him home from the hospital on a one-day pass the day he committed suicide but they denied assisting. The other children alleged the two knew he wanted to commit suicide, drove him to a cabin on the property, helped him inside, gave him a loaded shotgun and left. For the purposes of deciding the dispute, the court assumed those facts were true but still ruled in their favor. "Providing Edward with a loaded shotgun did not deprive him of his life: he deprived himself of life by shooting himself with the shotgun," Vergeront wrote.
But it isn't up to the court to decide proper policy. It is up to the court to apply the law. And given the facts of this case, and the wording of the law, at least as described in the story, I think the court is probably right that these people did not actively kill the decedent.
That said, the legislature should immediately and forthrightly close this loophole in civil law.
Labels: Assisted Suicide. Inheritance. Wisconsin Court Ruling
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 2:46 PM
16 Comments
16 Comments:
I suspect that any legislation to close this loophole would have to be fairly carefully drafted to avoid sitrring up litigation.
Example: John Moneybags, sick and elderly, leaves hosptal with two of his children on a day pass. They take him to the home of his third child, which is an 18th-floor condo. While they're there, and the children are otherwise occupied, John leaps to his death from the balcony. In the subsequent dispute over his multimillion-dollar estate, the third child alleges that the other two knew that John was suicidal and brought him to the high-rise knowing that he'd likely do exactly what he did. The other two deny it. He said, she said. Child number 3 may not be able to prove it, but, if the amount at stake is large enough, she might just decide to roll the dice.
I suppose that the legislation could be crafted to discourage this sort of thing, and I would hope that the legislators would have this in mind. In my admittedly limited experience, I've observed that family disputes over estates can escalate pretty quickly, even when the amounts involved are fairly small.
Hold on just a minute. Is suicide itself not a crime in Wisconsin? And wouldn't it therefore legally follow that assisting in suicide (being an accomplice before or after the fact to a crime) is itself a crime? And is there not a long, long, positively _ancient_ legal principle that a person cannot profit from a crime?
Therefore, it doesn't matter if the specific statutory law in question does or doesn't apply here. Inheriting in this case would still be profiting from a crime.
Another point: Let's not forget that these days, "assisting in a suicide" is often taken to include what Jack Kevorkian did, where he "assisted" people who were paralyzed. In other words, assistance is usually taken to include actually doing the deed for someone who is unable to do it himself. And that could be called "assisting another in voluntarily taking his or her own life." Yet it would also fall under the usual understanding of someone who "intentionally kills" another person. So it would seem that assisted suicide in one understanding of the phrase clearly could also fall under the statutory law as well.
Lydia: Suicide per se is not a crime in any state. Years ago, it was decided that it is a mental health matter, not one for the criminal courts.
Lydia, I believe Wes is right. When suicide was a crime, it seemed ludicrous; arrest somebody for trying to kill themselves? But the rationale at the time was that it gave law enforcement the authority to put suicidal people into custody for their own protection. As Wes said, once they put that authority in the hands of mental health officials, that took the place of the criminal law, and that does seem to work better.
But if it's just a legal activity, how _do_ the mental health people have authority to stop someone? Or for that matter, bystanders? If I'm engaging in some legal activity, like, I don't know, mowing my lawn, and you come along and physically stop me, you get in trouble for assault or something like that. So how is it different when some Good Samaritan grabs a guy when he's about to jump off the bridge, if suicide is legal? Or if you believe your spouse is suicidal and take his gun away from the house, why don't you get in trouble for theft?
I'm just trying to get a handle on the legal situation here.
In any event, I think my follow-up point is probably very much in the minds of the Wisconsin RTL people. "Assisting" someone in committing suicide covers a lot of ground, including much more direct involvement even than the (despicable, may I add) actions of the people in this story.
Lydia: There are other ways of using the law than criminal sanction. There is a whole body of civil law that permits forced treatment. If someone is suicidal, the patient--not defendent--can be put on a hold with appropriate affidavit support by mental health professionals. But to maintain this control, the authorities have to prove that the person is either a threat to themselves or to others. At that point, there can be a court order requiring hospitalization and treatment. The person must be released when the authorities believe that the threat has eased or no longer exists.
Knowing the WI R to L people as I do, there is no doubt that they are already planning to push for appropriate legislation.
I'm still a bit curious: How does that body of civil law apply directly to ad libbing in a suicidal situation? That is to say, how does it permit immediate actions that have to be taken in when a person is suicidal and there is not (yet) any affadavit to the effect that the person can be put under restraint? Obviously, when the guy is on the bridge and that's the first you know of it, he has to be stopped. Or if you suddenly discover that your 20-something adult child, living in the house, is suicidal, you may hide or take away the means of self-destruction. What would be the legal situation in court if a person were prevented from committing suicide in this way, if he seemed sufficiently rational in conversation that there was no evidence of insanity _other than_ the attempt to commit suicide, and if he then tried to sue the people who had stopped him for theft (for taking or hiding his guns) or for unlawful restraint (for stopping him from throwing him off the bridge)? On what basis would the judge throw it out of court (as I assume any judge worth his salt would do)?
And if suicide is not illegal in any state, then do all those states have formal, statutory laws against _assisting_ in suicide? If they do, then the people in the story may still have been committing a crime. If they don't, then why are the assisted suicide advocates always working to _legalize_ assisted suicide, as though it is prima facie _illegal_?
Sorry to have so many questions, but the news that suicide is legal throughout the U.S. comes as a surprise to me.
Assisting suicide is a different kettle of fish. Now, you are joining with someone else to cause the death of someone else. Plus the issue of coercion, conflicts of interest, etc. as seen in this case. Suicide is deemed an act of mental illness. Helping someone else do that is considered participation in a homicide. And properly so.
The law has not yet accepted rational suicide, except to a certain degree in Oregon. So, if it can be proved beyond a reasonable certainty, that a person is a threat to himself, he or she can be involuntarily treated.
Not just suicide. For example, if someone had an obsession to cut off their own arm--which is a mental illness called body identity integrity disorder.
Or, if someone kept burning themselves with a cigarette as a way of relieving mental anguish, etc.
The last thing that someone who fails at suicide needs is jail. They, and those seriously contemplating need help. And, for now, at least--remember, much of the assisted suicide movement would do away with this--the state's duty to protect the lives of all citizens permits this form of protection.
So I suppose from the perspective of a suicide advocate, he would say that suicide isn't "legal" in the relevant sense, because an adult person can still be stopped from doing it--presumably by his friends and relations as well as by the forces of the law. In other words, it's still "illegal" in the sense that you aren't allowed to do it, even if it isn't "illegal" in the sense that you go to jail for doing it. Have I got that right?
They say that since suicide isn't a crime, assisted suicide shouldn't be either.
Is assisted suicide illegal only in states that have an explicit law against it? Do all states except Oregon have such statutory laws? Would any of these apply to the WI case?
Lydia: Most states explicitly outlaw it, including WI. A few states have no statutes but would seem to outlaw it by common law, e.g. court rulings. Only Oregon has legalized it. WA has an initiative to legalize now that is leading in the polls.
My guess, though, is that the anti-assisted suicide WI law applies only to physician assistance or to more active assistance--say, actually pushing a button or something--than what was provided by the relatives here, right? I mean, if they were breaking a law, any law, by taking this guy to the cabin and providing him with a shotgun, then it seems to me they can legally be blocked from inheritance by the principle that you cannot profit from a crime.
Well, here it is. Pretty brief and to the point:
Wis. Stat. 940.12 Assisting suicide. Whoever with intent that another take his or her own life assists such person to commit suicide is guilty of a Class H felony.
It looks to me as though the relatives plausibly could have been charged under this statute. Perhaps the problem was that the prosecutors thought they couldn't prove intent and couldn't get a conviction, so the relatives were never charged. And I guess if they were not convicted of a crime, the probate court cannot take into account their actions _as_ a crime and use that to deny inheritance.
The more I think about it, the more I think that it would have looked somewhat better if the judge had said in his ruling that if the relatives had been convicted under 940.12 they could not inherit, and that if they were under investigation the probate would be delayed or something like that (as I assume it would be if there were a murder investigation, for example), but that since there was apparently no question of their being convicted or even tried for the _statutory crime_ of assisting in a suicide, they could inherit, because the probate law about "intentional killing" is the only law that applies. Something along those lines. It seems to me that even in the case of intentional killing, there would need to be some sort of police action in order for the probate court to take it into account. If someone hasn't been convicted of a crime, my understanding is that under law, the crime does not exist. The worriesome aspect of the ruling seems to me to be that it *could be taken* to be saying that even a person convicted under 940.12 could still inherit, which would be an abrogation of the common law principle that you cannot profit from a crime.
I found one case on-line discussed where a woman was convicted under WI 940.12 of "assisting suicide" where what she did was to put a pillow over the face of a man in hospice and *sit on it*. That was "assisting a suicide." Now, consider that she wasn't _convicted_ of killing him actively but rather of assisting his suicide, so if people who "merely" assist a suicide can inherit under WI law, this ruling would mean that even she could have inherited if that had been relevant in the case. It seems to me that there should have been some acknowledgement in the ruling that you cannot profit from a crime, including what is in WI the crime of assisting in suicide. The probate law about intentional killing just doesn't seem to me the only relevant legal aspect.
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