Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, November 27, 1994                   TAG: 9411280064
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: ROYAL OAK, MICH.                                 LENGTH: Medium

KEVORKIAN HELPS IN ANOTHER DEATH

The woman, Margaret Garrish of Royal Oak, died about 6 a.m. Michael A. Schwartz, a lawyer for Kevorkian, said she breathed carbon monoxide gas supplied by his client, a 66-year-old retired pathologist.

In a videotape released eight months ago, Garrish complained of unending pain and said, ``I would like an out.''

Kevorkian has said Garrish had severe rheumatoid arthritis, advanced osteoporosis and other disorders that had forced the amputation of both legs and removal of an eye. ``Her husband said, when he picked her up, he could hear her bones cracking,'' Kevorkian said Saturday.

Kevorkian, who had vowed to stop assisting in suicides, last March threatened to help Garrish die unless someone agreed to help relieve her pain. A doctor then prescribed morphine patches, which gave her some relief. ``But over time, even they proved insufficient,'' Schwartz said.

Schwartz and Kevorkian said the timing of the suicide had nothing to do with the expiration of the state law banning assisted suicide. ``Jack's only criteria has always been the patient - when the patient is ready, and when he feels it is medically the right time to help them,'' Schwartz said. ``In any event, the law was null and void from its arrival, since it has repeatedly been found unconstitutional.''

The death was the 21st Kevorkian has attended since he began helping people commit suicide in June 1990. The Oakland County medical examiner, Dr. Ljubisa J. Dragovic, promptly ruled the death Saturday a homicide, as he has all of the assisted suicides that have occurred in his county.

Whether Michigan now has any way to ban what Kevorkian does is unclear. The ban, which went into effect on Feb. 25, 1993, was intended to be in effect only while a commission came up with recommendations on a permanent law. The ban expired Friday, and the commission's recommendations went nowhere, while court rulings on the ban clouded the issue.

Last December, after nearly three weeks in jail, Kevorkian promised to stop assisting suicides ``until we get some resolution on this from the courts.'' Since then, the Michigan Court of Appeals agreed with three lower judges and ruled the temporary ban unconstitutional for technical reasons.