Commentary -

Just Hope You Die Quick

 

By Bill Collins

Think of pain,

As positive;

‘Cause through it all,

   We’ll make you live.

 

So Harry Kiernan of Glastonbury has finally been convicted. The judge says he helped his wife commit suicide. The jury in his previous trial said he didn’t, but since they were not unanimous, the prosecutor had the right to try him again.

The first thing we know about Kiernan is that, guilty or not, he’s stupid. Or crazy. No sane man with an IQ high enough to keep him out of an institution would choose a judge over a jury. Juries have the right to be human. The old saying that “no jury would convict him” seems on target here. Kiernan’s wife, Denise, had MS really bad. There was no dignity left in her life, but lots of pain. She told everyone that she was eager to die, and despite the pain and indignity, she still had all her marbles. Even if Kiernan did help her, it would have been a rare jury which thought that punishing him would serve justice.

Let’s hope that Judge John Maloney, who found him guilty on the facts, now feels the same. Perhaps he could sentence Kiernan to a week of Happy Meals at McDonald’s. That would surely make him ponder his deed.

But the real villain in this drama is prosecutor Kevin Murphy. One wonders what sort of monster this man must be. The case against Kiernan had been adequately resolved. The decedent’s fervent wish had been granted. Lives had returned to normal. Pointless suffering had ended. God seemed to be in his Heaven. But Murphy, for whatever ignoble reason, decided to reopen the wound. Judge Maloney should discipline him with a year of Happy Meals. Who knows how many real criminals have gone un-prosecuted because of the time wasted on Kiernan. We know that staff shortages are desperate in the courts.

Unfortunately America’ s religious fervor against assisted suicide does not end with Harry Kiernan. In Congress, House Judiciary Chairman (and most prominent moral hypocrite) Henry Hyde is trying to overturn the humane suicide law in Oregon. Hyde wants to defrock any doctor who uses prescription drugs to help some miserable wretch legally end it all. Since prescription drugs are the best vehicle for painless deliverance, such a law would instantly override Oregon’s two remarkable pro-suicide referendums. Not to mention all the careful procedures the state has dutifully put in place to implement them.

Locally, press reports suggest that both of our senators, Chris Dodd and Joe Lieberman, are on Hyde’s side in  seeking to undo Oregon.

Meanwhile, up north, the State of Maine is conducting a fierce referendum battle in hopes of joining Oregon. The Roman Catholic Church is focusing its considerable national resources in ending that off. The tiny Hemlock Society (207/772-7161) is sanity’s chief sponsor.

Curiously it is our country’s Draconian drug laws which push many sufferers over the brink to suicide. Often their pain can only be controlled by big doses of narcotics, but the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) sets stern limits on the size of doses a doctor may prescribe. Thus doctors, fearful of losing their license, under-prescribe to dying patients, leaving them in fearsome pain. The DEA worries that they’ll become addicted.

Do common sense and mercy on this issue exist anywhere in the world? Well, yes. In Holland. The Dutch have figured out both drugs and suicide. That should be a serious comfort for them as each individual’s end draws near. In Connecticut were prefer suffering.

(Bill Collins, a former mayor of Norwalk, is a syndicated columnist.)