ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, November 1, 1996 TAG: 9611010039
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: PONTIAC, MICH.
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
PERSISTENT PROSECUTOR Richard Thompson is having another go at putting the doctor behind bars.
Dr. Jack Kevorkian was charged Thursday with assisting three suicides since June - a departing prosecutor's last-ditch effort to put the retired pathologist in prison.
Kevorkian planned to surrender for a court appearance late Thursday afternoon, Oakland County Prosecutor Richard Thompson and Kevorkian attorney Geoffrey Fieger said.
Three previous attempts to prosecute Kevorkian have failed. Thompson prosecuted him once under a law enacted specifically to stop him, and then under unwritten common law, losing both times. Kevorkian also was acquitted in 1994 in Wayne County.
Thompson apparently will not be able to see the latest prosecution through to its conclusion, since his term ends Dec. 31. He was defeated in the Aug. 6 Republican primary by a candidate who accused him of wasting tax dollars pursuing Kevorkian.
In the latest case, Kevorkian is charged with assisting the suicides of Bette Lou Hamilton, 67, of Columbus, Ohio; Shirley Kline, 63, of Oceanside, Calif.; and Rebecca Badger, 39, of Goleta, Calif. Assisting a suicide is a common-law felony in Michigan punishable by up to five years in prison.
Kevorkian also is charged with 16 related counts, including conspiracy, presenting himself as a physician while engaging in unlawful conduct, possessing a controlled substance, removing bodies without permission of the medical examiner and attempting to assist a suicide, Thompson said.
The prosecutor said Kevorkian associate Neal Nicol and Dr. Georges Reding, a psychiatrist, face various charges of conspiracy to assist suicide, assisting suicide and removing a body without a medical examiner's permission.
Although Thompson is a lame duck, he said he can take ``legal steps'' to ensure prosecution after his term ends. He wouldn't say what those steps were.
``I would not be filing criminal cases if I knew at the end of December these charges would be dismissed,'' he said.
The criminal charges are not the only action Thompson is pursuing against Kevorkian. On Tuesday, Thompson served Kevorkian with a notice requiring him to explain why he should not be held in contempt of court for violating a 1991 injunction barring him from assisting in suicides.
A court date is set for Wednesday before Judge Denise Langford Morris on that action.
The order served to Kevorkian names four other people whose deaths he attended after Oakland County juries acquitted him twice earlier this year.
Thompson said that if prosecutors can show that Kevorkian did help the four die, by supplying drugs or equipment, he could be found in contempt and jailed 30 days in each death. He also would be subject to a $250 fine in each case.
The 1991 action by state Judge Alice Gilbert prohibits Kevorkian from supplying machines, equipment and drugs, or from ``conducting any acts'' that help people die. The U.S. Supreme Court earlier this month turned away Kevorkian's challenge to the order.
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