Final Exit Network Receives Decisive Victory in Minnesota Assisted Suicide Case

TALLAHASSEE, Fla., Oct. 2, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Final Exit Network has won a decisive skirmish in its battle against criminal charges in Minnesota and in support of its right to freedom of speech.

A three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals of Minnesota ruled on September 30 that the State's law against "advising, encouraging, or assisting" in a "suicide" was unconstitutional under the First Amendment to the extent it prohibits "advising" and "encouraging." Under the ruling, Final Exit Network and its volunteers, former medical director Larry Egbert and former case coordinator Roberta Massey, may be convicted of violating the statute only if the State proves they "assisted" FEN member Doreen Dunn, 57, in her self-deliverance on May 30, 2007, as charged. Yet Exit Guides do not provide illegal "assistance" in self-deliverance.

"Until now, the Minnesota statute prohibited Final Exit Network from carrying out the core of its mission, which is to provide information, education, and emotional support and comfort to competent adults in their own self-deliverance from intolerable suffering," said Final Exit Network President Wendell Stephenson. "This decision says what we do is perfectly legal."

The Court of Appeals declined to dismiss the indictment in case the prosecutor elects to try to convict FEN, Massey and Dr. Egbert of "assisting" in a "suicide." Whenever the appeals are completed, the case would have to resume in any event in the trial court, where FEN and its volunteers are also charged with interfering with evidence at the scene of a death.

The late former FEN president Jerry Dincin was indicted in the case, but charges against him were dropped when he died last March. Another former FEN president, Ted Goodwin, was also charged, but the charges against him were dismissed for lack of evidence of his involvement. The State had tried to charge Goodwin solely because he was president of FEN at the time of Dunn's death.

Last December, Dakota County (Hastings, MN) District Judge Karen Asphaug ruled that the word "advising" in the statute violated the defendants' First Amendment rights, but she gave the word "encouraging" a "narrowing construction" to save its constitutionality. With its case gutted before trial, the state appealed.

Affirming Judge Asphaug's conclusion that the "advising" part of the law was unconstitutional, the Court of Appeals found the "encouraging" part of the statute equally unconstitutional and not salvageable by any "narrowing construction." The Court of Appeals decision was written by Republican-appointed Judge Louise Dovre Bjorkman.

"As written," she wrote in the opinion, the statute "criminalizes any and all expressions of support, guidance, planning, or education to people who want to end their own lives, whether from a public platform, such as a book, or in the private setting of a hospital room or family home. It likely criminalizes even patently political speech endorsing a right to die. As the district court concluded, and the state now concedes, the state's interest in preventing suicide does not justify these extreme limitations on protected speech about suicide."

In an extremely unusual twist, the Court of Appeals' decision in the Final Exit Network case was directly contrary to a decision of the same court made only last year in the case of William Francis Melchert-Dinkel, who was convicted of "advising" or "encouraging" a suicide under the same statute. In his case, the statute was found facially constitutional by the Court of Appeals, and Melchert-Dinkel's appeal is now pending in the Minnesota Supreme Court. There, Final Exit Network has filed an amicus brief to argue why the Court of Appeals ruling was wrong.

Hours after Bjorkman's opinion was released, the Dakota County prosecutor, County Attorney James Backstrom, announced in a press release that he will appeal the Court of Appeals of Minnesota's ruling to the Supreme Court of Minnesota.

Contact:

Robert Rivas

850-412-0306

SOURCE Final Exit Network