Advantages of the Premature-Death Approach to the Right-to-Die
Puts
the Burden-of-Proof on the Prosecution:
Presumed Innocent
If we create new laws that prohibit causing
premature death,
then the burden-of-proof falls on whatever authority
is responsible for prosecuting crimes in that location.
And most criminal-justice systems presume
that the person to be charged is innocent until proven guilty.
The patient, proxies, & physicians are assumed
to
have acted in good faith
—unless some evidence can be presented to show otherwise.
And when any criminal investigation begins,
it will look first to the actual
behavior—and the results of that behavior.
The prosecutor must prove that the defendants harmed the patient.
And in the vast
majority of deaths, there will be no harms to
investigate.
When health-care
laws are used,
the investigation begins with the paperwork
—to
see if the appropriate waiting periods were observed,
if other doctors were consulted,
if the life-ending drugs were correctly prescribed, etc.
The prosecutor will have the burden of convincing a
jury of ordinary people
that the patient died too
soon—that
someone caused a premature death.
And this will be an extremely difficult case to prove
if two doctors, an ethics committee, a psychiatrist, and all family
members
unanimously agree that this patient died at the best time.
Moreover, a criminal case must
be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
And the defense will be permitted to raise
such easy-to-understand questions as:
How much longer would the patient have lived
without any of the life-ending decisions?
Everyone who helped the patient to choose a timely
death
is presumed to be innocent and acting in good faith
unless the prosecutor can prove otherwise.
Created March 30,
2007; revised 3-31-2007; 2-1-2008; 2-28-2008; 6-7-2009; 3-27-2010:
1-17-2012; 1-18-2012; 1-26-2012;
2-29-2012; 3-10-2012; 9-7-2012;
4-7-2013; 4-19-2013; 6-21-2014;
3-18-2015; 7-16-2015; 8-10-2016;
2-23-2018; 12-2-2020;
Go to
the beginning of this website
James
Leonard Park—Free
Library