British man with locked-in syndrome mounts legal challenge to die

From The Guardian in the UK:

A 54-year-old engineering executive who suffered a massive stroke and lives "locked-in", able only to move his head and eyes, July 19 launched a legal attempt to allow his wife to kill him.

Tony Nicklinson (pictured) wants the director of public prosecutions to give guidance on whether the Crown would press murder charges against his wife if she administered a lethal injection. The case could reach the supreme court in a landmark attempt to have the law on murder changed to allow for "consensual killing".

Nicklinson is not terminally ill and is not in pain, but he has said he expects to "dribble his way into old age" and is "fed up" with his life. In a statement placed before the court, he says he wishes he had died when he suffered a stroke while on business in Athens in 2005.

The former rugby player used to work in the United Arab Emirates and travelled across the Middle East and far east before he fell ill but is now fed liquidised food twice a day and almost never leaves his home in Wiltshire. He has stopped talking to most people as it is so frustrating to communicate using an alphabet board.

"I need help in almost every aspect of my life," he said in a statement sent to the court today"I cannot scratch if I itch, I cannot pick my nose if it is blocked and I can only eat if I am fed like a baby – only I won't grow out of it, unlike the baby. I have no privacy or dignity left. I am washed, dressed and put to bed by carers who are, after all, still strangers.

"I am fed up with my life and don't want to spend the next 20 years or so like this. Am I grateful that the Athens doctors saved my life? No, I am not. If I had my time again, and knew then what I know now, I would not have called the ambulance but let nature take its course."

His paralysis beneath the neck means he cannot kill himself other than by prolonged starvation, which he does not want to do, and he is not willing to risk his wife being jailed for life on a murder charge if she kills him. He wants the right to die at home with his family around him rather than travel to Switzerland to die where medically assisted euthanasia is legal.

Nicklinson's move is the most ambitious attempt yet to loosen laws on the right to die which have so far centred on reforming the assisted suicide law. His attempt to change the way the murder law is applied was branded "deeply troubling" by anti-euthanasia groups who fear it could leave disabled people vulnerable to being coerced into euthanasia.

"We have seen cases of assisted suicide and euthanasia where people have been coerced, involving disabled people who are made to feel they have become a burden on financial resources," said a spokesman for Care Not Killing. "We can't have a situation where a right to die becomes a duty to die."

Nicklinson is seeking a judicial review of the director of public prosecutions' stance on "consensual killing", and asking for guidance on whether it is always in the public interest to prosecute in such cases. If that fails he plans to challenge the Ministry of Justice over its application of the murder law.

In February, multiple sclerosis sufferer Debbie Purdy and her husband, Omar Puente, secured a statement from Keir Starmer, director of public prosecutions on the likelihood of a prosecution being brought against Puente for assisted suicide if he helped his wife to die.

But Starmer's statement, listing six mitigating factors against an individual being prosecuted for assisting suicide, does not apply to Nicklinson's proposed euthanasia because he cannot be helped to kill himself; he must be killed.

The DPP's guidance on euthanasia is "murder is so serious that a prosecution is almost certainly required even in cases such as 'mercy killing' of a sick relative".

A CPS spokeswoman said: "The DPP does not consider that specific public interest factors tending in favour of or against a prosecution for murder or manslaughter in these circumstances are required."

Jane Nicklinson, Tony's wife, told the Guardian: "It needs to be possible. Nobody is saying it needs to be easy, but it needs to be possible. Poor old Tony is suffering ... The law needs to be changed. It is the only way for Tony to get what he wants ... I get cross that anyone would question what we are after. He just wants what everyone else can do. Suicide is legal."

Nicklinson has two daughters, Lauren 22, and Beth 20, and they have watched their father become upset at his condition. He spends most of each day in his specially adapted bungalow watching daytime TV and painstakingly writing a memoir with the help of a computer. He also writes letters to people on the right-to-die debate. A carer stays overnight and helps him to move his limbs three or four times during the night.

"Often he coughs and he needs to have his saliva wiped or he needs to be repositioned because he has flopped over," explains a statement prepared by his solicitor Bindmans.

"Mr Nicklinson's situation is rare and tragic," said Sarah Wootton, chief executive of Dignity in Dying. "His request to die presents society with difficult questions, for which there are no easy answers. One thing is clear: the current law fails Tony Nicklinson and his family.

"The law of murder is primarily used to convict people who act out of malicious motivation and as such carries a mandatory life sentence. It should not be used to prosecute someone who compassionately helps a person who is suffering to die at their request."

Test cases
By asking permission for his wife to be allowed to kill him with his consent, Tony Nicklinson is seeking a rethink of the law on murder – for which the current sentence is life. Motivation such as mercy killing is no defence.

If his stroke had left him capable of taking his own life and he needed his wife's help, he would have been wrestling with the crime of assisted suicide, on which law lords and the director of public prosecutions have recently provided rulings and guidance.

Last summer, the law lords backed the argument put by Debbie Purdy, who has multiple sclerosis, that it is a breach of her human rights not to know whether her husband would be prosecuted if he accompanies her to the Swiss clinic where she wishes to die if her condition worsens. The DPP provided fresh guidelines on the public interest test. Tonight the DPP ruled out new guidelines for mercy killings, so Nicklinson faces challenging the murder laws through the courts.