Assisted suicide back in spotlight after Georgia arrest

ATLANTA — The man told Thomas Goodwin he wanted to kill himself to end the pain of pancreatic cancer. But first he wanted to go downstairs to get a photograph of his wife.

So Goodwin — president of Final Exit Network, one of the nation's most prominent assisted-suicide groups — waited in the bedroom for the man to return.

Instead, Goodwin was surprised by agents from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, who burst in and arrested him Wednesday for violating the state's assisted-suicide law. They also opened a new front in a resurgent war over Americans' rights to take their own lives.

While other right-to-die activists nationwide have been fighting for — and in some key cases recently, winning — the legal right to assisted suicide, volunteers from Goodwin's 5-year-old nonprofit organization have focused on quietly visiting the bedsides of Americans and offering suicide instructions, which they prefer to call "guidance to self-deliverance."

Using a system that incorporates a plastic hood and helium tanks available at many party-supply stores, the group has helped about 200 people end their lives peacefully, according to Derek Humphry, chairman of the group's advisory board.

The Georgia sting operation comes a decade after the homicide conviction of Jack Kevorkian, the Michigan doctor and well-known assisted-suicide advocate who administered a lethal injection to a man with Lou Gehrig's disease in 1998. Kevorkian's subsequent eight-year prison stint lowered the national profile of what had been a white-hot ethical and legal debate.

The issue has begun heating up again. In November, voters in Washington made their state the second in the nation, after Oregon, to legalize physician-assisted suicides. A month later, a judge in Montana ruled to allow the practice, as well; the state is appealing the decision. A legalization bill was introduced in the Hawaii Legislature this year, but it will not get a hearing. Similar bills are pending in New Hampshire, Massachusetts and New Mexico.

Still a criminal act

In many places, however, assisting in a suicide remains a criminal act: In Georgia, it is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. Opponents of assisted suicide are hailing the arrest of Goodwin — along with three other members of the group who were charged — as a much-needed victory for the status quo.

Assisted-suicide foe Rita Marker said she expects Americans will find the details of the group's methods "grotesque."

Some proponents also welcomed the arrests, saying they hope the ensuing legal fight will help tear down remaining anti-suicide statutes. "We will fight this all the way to the Supreme Court," said Humphry, the author of "Final Exit," a best-selling suicide manual from which the group took its name. "This could be the seminal case on which the law turns."

John Bankhead, a Georgia Bureau of Investigation spokesman, said the sting operation helped investigators verify the methods used by the Final Exit group. Technically, however, the criminal charges stem from the June 19, 2008, suicide of John Celmer, 58, a cancer patient from Cumming, Ga.

An undercover agent described the exit setup this way: A person seeking to commit suicide places an "exit hood" over his head and inflates it by turning on a tank of helium and the gas fills his bloodstream. After a few breaths, he loses consciousness. Ten to 15 minutes later, he dies.

According to an affidavit filed by investigators, Celmer was "cancer free at the time of his death," although he was embarrassed and concerned about his appearance after surgeries for head and neck cancer. He also had arthritis pain.

At issue in the case is whether the four assisted-suicide ring members actively helped Celmer kill himself or merely gave him guidance about how to end his life on his own.

The distinction is being hammered out by state, district and federal courts, legal experts say.

"There's not a big body of case law that distinguishes between the two," said William Colby, an attorney who is a fellow with the Center for Practical Bioethics.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2006 that states regulate medical practice, including assisted suicide.

Celmer apparently wrote the group in May, saying he wanted to die using the helium method. His plea and some medical information were forwarded to Lawrence Egbert, 81, a Baltimore doctor and the group's medical director.

Family calls authorities

After Celmer's death, his wife found a letter and "release forms" he had signed for the group. Celmer's family called authorities, and in a subsequent taped phone call with Celmer's son, Final Exit member Claire Blehr, 76, of Atlanta, said she and Goodwin, the president of the Atlanta-area group, were with Celmer when he died.

Blehr and Goodwin said they held Celmer's hands during the 12-minute helium-inhalation process, according to the affidavit. "This would have prevented John Celmer the ability to pull the hood off his head if he changed his mind about dying," the document states.

Blehr was arrested Wednesday in Georgia and remains in custody. Egbert, a visiting assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, was arrested and jailed in Baltimore. A fourth suspected member of the group, Nicolas Alec Sheridan, 60, of Baltimore was also charged but is not in custody.

All are charged with assisted suicide, tampering with evidence, and violation of Georgia's racketeering and corrupt-influences act. If convicted on all counts, each faces 18 years or more in prison.

Network members said they carefully screen people who want to commit suicide, but there are also questions about the death of an Arizona woman the group helped in 2007. Police said Jana Van Voorhis was depressed but not terminally ill.

Jerry Dincin, a vice president of Final Exit Network, called the group's type of end-of-life support the "great cause of the 21st century."

He said the group believes in trusting its members and giving them repeated chances to change their minds in the days before they go through with suicides.

"There is one human being who should decide about his own life, and (Celmer) did. It's not his mom, his wife, his pastor," said Dincin. "Whose life is it anyway?"

Defense attorneys said their clients violated no state laws and will be exonerated.

"Whatever happened here is no more than what happened in a hospice," said Michael Kaminkow, an attorney representing two of the network members arrested Wednesday. "In reality, a hospice is a suicide. It's just a little slower."

Material from The Associated Press is included in this report.