Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 9, 1990 TAG: 9006090005
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: PONTIAC, MICH. LENGTH: Medium
Oakland County Circuit Judge Alice Gilbert also enjoined the 62-year-old retired pathologist from helping people use any other means to kill themselves. The temporary orders are effective statewide, said assistant prosecutor Michael Modelski.
Kevorkian, who acted as his own attorney, had asked the judge to allow him to set up a team of "Untouchables" to help terminally ill people end their lives.
On Monday, Kevorkian assisted in the suicide of Janet Adkins, a 54-year-old Portland, Ore., woman who had been diagnosed as being in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease.
Modelski said there were no immediate plans to prosecute Kevorkian, but an investigation was continuing.
Kevorkian had asked the judge for a partial injunction, instead of the full stop order sought by prosecutors, to allow use of his machine in "a specific set of circumstances."
He said he wanted time to set up a committee of specialists to establish a permanent "planned death policy" for when to use the machine. He said he also wanted to set up an "obitorium," a clinic for the terminally ill who want medical help with suicide.
"Let me put together a small team, called the Untouchables," Kevorkian told a media-packed courtroom. "I guarantee, under my supervision, it would be incorruptible."
Modelski questioned the judgment of Kevorkian's suggested clinic involving a person who is physically well but mentally ill.
"It's got to be a medical decision. I've had many healthy people call me, begging to get them out of their misery," Kevorkian said, adding the clinic would focus on people with incurable diseases.
Kevorkian created an intravenous device that he hooked up to Adkins at her request. It allowed her to press a button that fed coma- and death-inducing drugs into her bloodstream.
Kevorkian's sister, Flora Holzheimer of Frankfurt, West Germany, testified that she drove Adkins to the Oakland County park where she committed suicide.
Holzheimer spent Saturday evening before the suicide with her brother, Adkins and Adkins' husband, Ronald.
Each time her health faltered, "she died a thousand deaths," Holzheimer said of Adkins. "Someone said to her, `Janet, you're just getting there before us.' She said, `I know' and smiled."
Also subpoenaed for Friday's hearing was another sister of Kevorkian's, Margo Janus of Troy, who reportedly was present during the suicide in the back of the doctor's Volkswagen van.
A survey published Friday found wide support for medically assisted suicide for the terminally ill. Two-thirds of 724 adults surveyed this week by telephone believed medical facilities should be available to help the terminally ill end their lives.
by CNB