Monday, November 7, 2011

The Court Hears Challenge To Assisted Suicide Law.

The Georgia’s highest court on Monday will hear a challenge that seeks to strike down the state’s assisted-suicide law, passed by the Legislature almost two decades ago to punish people like the late Jack Kevorkian who helped people kill themselves and the 4 members of the Final Exit Network say the law violates the right to free speech and does not really prohibit those who assist others committing suicide.

The court’s ruling will determine whether the defendants will stand trial in Forsyth County and where 58-year-old John Celmer killed himself two years after he had been diagnosed with cancer Kevorkian, a Michigan pathologist known as “Dr. Death,” died in June to he catapulted into fame in the early 1990s by overseeing the suicides of more than 100 people and prompting dozens of states to criminalize assisted-suicide in 1997, the U.S Supreme Court held that preventing assisted suicide was a legitimate state interest only 3 states Oregon, Washington and Montana legalize it.

The 1994, the Georgia Legislature enacted a law that makes it a felony for anyone “who publicly advertises, offers or holds himself or herself out as offering that he or she will intentionally and actively assist another person in the commission of suicide and commits any overt act to further that purpose and the crime carries a maximum sentence of 5 years in prison.

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