Supreme Court Upholds
Oregon Law
Allowing
Doctor-Assisted Suicides
By AP from the
WSJ.com January 17, 2006
WASHINGTON -- The Supreme
Court on Tuesday upheld Oregon's one-of-a-kind physician-assisted suicide law,
rejecting a Bush administration attempt to punish doctors who help terminally
ill patients die.
Justices, on a 6-3 vote, said the 1997 Oregon law used to end the lives of more
than 200 seriously ill people trumped federal authority to regulate doctors.
That means the administration improperly tried to use a federal drug law to
prosecute Oregon doctors who prescribe overdoses. Then-Attorney General
John Ashcroft vowed to do that in 2001, saying that doctor-assisted suicide is
not a "legitimate medical purpose."
Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, said the federal government
does, indeed, have the authority to go after drug dealers and pass rules for
health and safety. But Oregon's law covers only extremely sick people --
those with incurable diseases, whom at least two doctors agree have six months
or less to live and are of sound mind.
Tuesday's decision is a reprimand of sorts for Mr. Ashcroft. Justice
Kennedy said the "authority claimed by the attorney general is both beyond his
expertise and incongruous with the statutory purposes and design."
"The authority desired by the government is inconsistent with the design of the
statute in other fundamental respects. The attorney general does not have
the sole delegated authority under the [law]," Justice Kennedy wrote for
himself, retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and Justices John Paul Stevens,
David Souter, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia
dissented. Justice Scalia, writing the dissent, said that federal
officials have the power to regulate the doling out of medicine.
"If the term 'legitimate medical purpose" has any meaning, it surely excludes
the prescription of drugs to produce death," he wrote.
The ruling backed a decision by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which
said Mr. Ashcroft's "unilateral attempt to regulate general medical practices
historically entrusted to state lawmakers interferes with the democratic debate
about physician-assisted suicide."
Mr. Ashcroft had brought the case to the Supreme Court on the day his
resignation was announced by the White House in 2004. The Justice
Department has continued the case, under his successor, Attorney General Alberto
Gonzales.
Justice Scalia said the court's ruling "is perhaps driven by a feeling that the
subject of assisted suicide is none of the federal government's business.
It is easy to sympathize with that position."
Justice Thomas wrote his own dissent as well, to complain that the court's
reasoning was puzzling. Chief Justice Roberts didn't write separately.
Justices have dealt with end-of-life cases before. In 1990, the Supreme
Court ruled that terminally ill people may refuse treatment that would otherwise
keep them alive. Then, justices in 1997 unanimously ruled that people have
no constitutional right to die, upholding state bans on physician-assisted
suicide. That opinion, by then-Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, said
individual states could decide to allow the practice.
Chief Justice Roberts strongly hinted in October when the case was argued that
he would back the administration. Justice O'Connor had seemed ready to
support Oregon's law, but her vote wouldn't have counted if the ruling had been
handed down after she left the court. (Gonzales v. Oregon)
Mob Case Denied
The high court refused Tuesday to decide whether defendants should get new
trials when prosecutors withhold evidence, rebuffing an appeal by a reputed mob
associate convicted of looting a small New Jersey printing company's pension
fund.
In the 1990s, Leonard Pelullo, a Miami businessman, was investigated by federal
authorities in Florida, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Federal officials
raided a large warehouse in Miami, where they seized 904 boxes, 114 file
cabinets and 10 file drawers containing documents from Mr. Pelullo's 25
companies.
Before his trial, prosecutors insisted they hadn't found any documents that
would have helped Mr. Pelullo's defense to the New Jersey charges. He was
convicted and sentenced to 17 years in prison in 1997 for siphoning $4.2 million
from Compton Press's pension and retirement funds after he took control of the
firm and put it out of business.
Mr. Pelullo's lawyers later discovered what a federal judge described as "a
mass" of evidence that could have helped Mr. Pelullo contradict several
government witnesses. The judge ordered a new trial for Mr. Pelullo.
But the Philadelphia-based Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, saying
prosecutors had given Mr. Pelullo and his lawyers numerous chances to review the
documents. The appellate court also said Mr. Pelullo should've know what
was in the records because they were his.
Mr. Pelullo also was convicted in Philadelphia on fraud and racketeering
charges. Mob informant Philip "Crazy Phil" Leonetti, a former underboss of
the Philadelphia Mafia, testified in that case that Mr. Pelullo was an associate
of his uncle, convicted mob boss Nicodemo "Little Nicky" Scarfo. (Pelullo v.
U.S.)
|
