Also known as: selfslaughter · suicide
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
A deliberate act by which a person ends his or her own life. The act supplies the factual predicate for privileges allowing reasonable force to prevent imminent self-harm and for criminal prohibitions on aiding or causing the death.
Selena Singh, delirious from medication, threatened to jump from a hospital window while muttering about ending her life. Nurse Santiago Sanchez locked the window and held the door to stop her. The intervention prevented the self-slaughter and exposed Sanchez to no liability.
Samuel Soto, terminally ill, asked physician Sofia Stern to prescribe lethal medication so he could commit self-slaughter. Stern refused, citing state law. The statute prohibiting such assistance was sustained against constitutional challenge.
On March 2, 1998, Patrick Kennedy called 911 at 9:18 a.m. to report that his eight-year-old stepdaughter L.H. had been raped in the side yard by two neighborhood boys who fled on a blue bicycle. Police arrived between 9:20 and 9:30 a.m. and found L.H. on her bed wrapped in a bloody blanket. She was bleeding profusely from severe vaginal injuries that included a laceration separating her cervix from the vagina and a torn perineum requiring emergency surgery at Children's Hospital. Kennedy initially told investigators that L.H. had been dragged from the garage to the yard. Both L.H. and Kennedy maintained this account in early interviews, including a three-hour videotaped session with a psychologist days after the assault. Physical evidence soon contradicted the yard account. The grass showed little disturbance except for coagulated blood. A bicycle found nearby had flat tires and spider webs. Blood was discovered on the underside of L.H.'s mattress inside the home. Kennedy had also made telephone calls before 7:37 a.m. inquiring how to remove blood from carpet. He had called a cleaning service. He did not contact 911 until roughly 9:18 a.m. Eight days after the crime, Kennedy was arrested. About a month later L.H. was removed from her mother's custody. On June 22, 1998, she first told her mother that Kennedy had raped her. In December 1999 she recorded a videotaped accusation at the Child Advocacy Center. The State charged Kennedy with aggravated rape of a child under twelve under La. Stat. Ann. § 14:42 and sought the death penalty. The trial began in August 2003 when L.H. was thirteen. She testified that Kennedy had been on top of her, had given her orange juice with chopped pills afterward, and had instructed her to blame neighborhood boys. The jury convicted Kennedy of aggravated rape. After hearing testimony from another child about prior sexual abuse by Kennedy, the jury unanimously sentenced him to death. The Louisiana Supreme Court affirmed the conviction and death sentence in 2007. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari in 2008.
View caseStephen Shaw attempted self-slaughter by arson and survived. Prosecutors sought capital punishment under a statute treating the act as murder. The Court invalidated the death sentence as disproportionate.
Sasha Stone told officers she wanted to commit self-slaughter and then confessed to a crime. The confession was later challenged as involuntary. The Court held that the suicide threat alone did not render the statement coerced.
Respondent Francis Connelly approached Officer Patrick Anderson of the Denver Police Department on August 18, 1983, at approximately 2:40 p.m. and stated that he had killed someone and wanted to talk about it. Anderson immediately advised respondent of his Miranda rights. Respondent stated that he understood those rights but wanted to talk about the murder anyway. At this point, respondent stated that he had come all the way from Boston to confess to the murder of Mary Ann Junta, a young girl whom he had killed in Denver sometime during the month of November 1982. Respondent was then taken to police headquarters. A detective again advised him of his rights. After respondent answered that he understood them, he was asked to describe the murder in detail. Respondent gave a lengthy account including the location of the body, the date of the murder, the fact that he had used a blunt instrument in the killing, and that after killing the victim he had washed his knife in a nearby stream. After hearing this account, the detective arrested respondent for the murder of Mary Ann Junta. A search of the area where respondent said the body was located revealed the body of a young girl. The cause of death was determined to be a skull fracture. At a preliminary hearing, the psychiatrist who had examined respondent testified that at the time of the confession, respondent was clearly suffering from chronic schizophrenia and was in a psychotic state at least as of the time of his arrest. The psychiatrist testified that respondent's psychosis motivated his confession, that respondent was not capable of making a free and intelligent decision to confess, and that the confession was not voluntary. The trial court found that respondent's initial statement to Officer Anderson was involuntary and ordered that it be suppressed. The trial court also ruled that the subsequent statements made at the police station were tainted by the prior involuntary statement and ordered that they too be suppressed. The Colorado Supreme Court affirmed the suppression order. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari to decide whether respondent's confession was obtained in a manner that violated the Due Process Clause.
View caseSantiago Sanchez, suffering from mental disease, attempted self-slaughter by overdose. He was charged with related offenses and raised an insanity defense. The court applied the product test to determine whether the act resulted from the illness.
Monte Durham was convicted of housebreaking by the District Court of the District of Columbia sitting without a jury. The prosecution proceeded on a charge arising from an incident on July 13, 1951, in which Durham was found in a house. Durham's history included discharge from the Navy in 1945 at age seventeen following a psychiatric examination revealing a profound personality disorder rendering him unfit for service. In 1947 he pleaded guilty to violating the National Motor Theft Act and was placed on probation for one to three years. In January 1948, as a result of a conviction in the District of Columbia Municipal Court for passing bad checks, the District Court revoked his probation and he commenced service of his Motor Theft sentence. His conduct within the first few days in jail led to a lunacy inquiry in the Municipal Court where a jury found him to be of unsound mind. Upon commitment to St. Elizabeths he was diagnosed as suffering from 'psychosis with psychopathic personality.' He experienced multiple discharges and readmissions to St. Elizabeths between 1949 and 1951, including a conditional release in June 1950 that he violated, and a further lunacy finding in 1951. Following the July 1951 housebreaking, Durham was indicted in October 1951 and adjudged of unsound mind based on psychiatrists' affidavits diagnosing psychosis with psychopathic personality. He underwent subshock insulin therapy during a six-month commitment ending in February 1953, after which Dr. Silk certified him mentally competent to stand trial and able to assist counsel. At the ensuing trial, the prosecutor expressed a plan to allow Durham to raise an insanity defense on this charge. The court accepted waivers of jury trial and additional competency proceedings despite Durham's expressed desire for further hospitalization. Testimony included that of Durham's mother regarding his post-May 1951 behavior and a psychiatrist who examined him in September 1951 and opined on his mental condition around the time of the offense. The trial court found the defense of insanity not established under the prevailing standards. The appeal reached the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
View caseSofia Stern sought public funding for treatment after a failed self-slaughter attempt. The program denied coverage for the procedure. The Court upheld the distinction between funding ordinary care and procedures linked to ending life.
Yes. The privilege permits reasonable force to prevent imminent self-harm when circumstances indicate an emergency, as shown by illustrations involving delirious threats and unconscious patients.
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No. States may prohibit physician-assisted suicide because they have legitimate interests in preserving life and protecting vulnerable persons.
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A person who purposely aids or solicits another to commit suicide is guilty of a felony if the conduct causes the suicide or an attempted suicide.
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Yes. The emergency aid doctrine permits warrantless entry when officers reasonably believe a person inside faces imminent serious injury from self-harm.
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…Oath was not uncontested even in Hippocrates' day; only the Pythagorean school of philosophers frowned upon the related act of suicide. Most Greek thinkers, on the other hand, commended abortion, at least prior to viability. See Plato, Republic, V, 461; Aristotle, Politics, VII, 1335b 25. For the Pythagoreans, however, it…