Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 20, 1994 TAG: 9404210022
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: DETROIT LENGTH: Medium
He said he had little faith the system would give him a fair shake.
``I don't want to go to jail, but going to jail will certify you're still in the Dark Ages,'' Kevorkian said as he waited for jury selection to begin.
But his attorney, Geoffrey Fieger, said ``no jury will ever convict Dr. Kevorkian.''
Sixty-six potential jurors filled out 12-page questionnaires prepared by Fieger, who has hired four jury consultants to evaluate responses. Wayne County Assistant Prosecutor Timothy Kenny, who is trying the case, and Detroit Recorder's Court Judge Thomas Jackson also will review them.
After that, attorneys for both sides can question potential jurors. Twelve jurors and two alternates are to be selected.
Jury selection could take until the end of the week, and the trial is expected to last about two weeks.
Among the 60 survey questions:
Do you consider yourself born again or reborn?
Does your religion forbid suicide?
Have you ever been involved in the day-to-day care of someone who was terminally ill ... or who suffered constant, severe pain that no medicine or treatment was able to relieve?
If convicted of violating Michigan's ban on assisted suicide - a ban enacted last year specifically to stop him - Kevorkian could face four years in prison and a $2,000 fine.
It was the first time the 65-year-old retired pathologist was brought to trial for helping someone take their life since his crusade for assisted suicide burst into the public spotlight with the revelation that he helped Janet Adkins of Portland, Ore., kill herself in 1990.
Adkins used an intravenous device Kevorkian invented to administer herself a fatal dose of drugs. She was 54 and suffered from Alzheimer's disease. At the time, Michigan had no law banning assisted suicides.
Kevorkian is charged with a felony in the Aug. 4 death of Thomas Hyde, 30, of Novi, who had the degenerative nerve disorder amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease.
Hyde, who used a wheelchair and could barely talk, made a videotape a month before his suicide saying he wanted to die.
Kevorkian has said he drove Hyde to Belle Isle, a Detroit River island park, where Hyde died after pulling a string that released carbon monoxide from a canister into a mask through which he was breathing.
Kevorkian, who says the terminally ill should be able to seek a doctor's help in committing suicide, has attended 20 deaths since 1990. Five have occurred since Michigan's ban was enacted last year.
He was charged with murder in some deaths before the ban, but those charges were dismissed by judges who ruled that assisting suicide was not a crime then.
Three cases brought against Kevorkian since the ban have been dismissed by judges who ruled that the law is unconstitutional. The state Court of Appeals is considering those cases, as well as a challenge to the law brought by the Michigan American Civil Liberties Union.
``There's no crime, no law,'' Kevorkian told reporters as he walked into court Tuesday. ``This is not a real trial.''
But he has promised not to help anyone else die until the state appeals court rules on the legality of the ban or until a public vote is held on the question. He is leading a petition drive to try to force a vote on whether assisted suicide should be legal.
by CNB