His current lawyer claims his counsel then was ineffective and his rights were violated.
http://www.ama-assn.org/sci-pubs/amnews/pick_01/prsh1008.htm
Oct. 8, 2001.
Lawyers for Jack Kevorkian, MD, argued
before Michigan Appellate judges Sept. 11 in an effort to either get his
1999 second-degree murder conviction dismissed or get him a new trial.
Mayer Morganroth, Dr. Kevorkian's
attorney, maintains his client had ineffective counsel in the first trial,
and that his Fifth, Ninth and 14th Amendment rights had been violated.
Dr. Kevorkian was convicted after
"60 Minutes" aired a videotape of him injecting potassium chloride into
Thomas Youk, who had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
"Our Supreme Court told him, if you
directly inject another person with poison, that's murder," said Oakland
County Assistant Prosecutor Anica Letica. "And that's what he did, and
then dared us to charge him on national television."
Morganroth argues that Dr. Kevorkian's
original attorneys never pursued as a defense the possibility Youk may
have died from his illness and not the injection.
Also, he said Youk's Eighth Amendment
rights were violated when he was not allowed to die on his own terms. "When
the government requires a person to live when they have irremediable pain,
that's cruel and unusual punishment."
A court decision is not expected
for two to six months, but Letica predicted the conviction would stand
and noted that Dr. Kevorkian was convicted of murder -- not assisted suicide.
"Euthanasia is murder," Letica said.
"Assisted suicide is different than active euthanasia. The person who participates
in an assisted suicide provides the means. But here he's the person who
participated in the final act which resulted in death."
Dr. Kevorkian is serving a 10- to
25-year sentence. Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a
decision to dismiss Dr. Kevorkian's libel suit against the AMA and the
Michigan State Medical Society after officials with the organizations referred
to him as a "killer" and a "reckless instrument of death."
By Andis Robeznieks,
AMNews staff.