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4.2.12
WC: 191694
Assisting Mercy Suicide
Another highly emotional case in which science was used to establish the immediate cause of
death involved the mercy killing by a doctor of his cancer-ridden wife.
Although the media characterized Patricia Rosier’s death as a “mercy killing,” it is more aptly
described as a “mercy suicide,” because she alone made the decision to end her life. A mercy
suicide, when committed by an adult of sound mind, is not a crime.
Mercy killing—the taking of the life of another person who is suffering and usually no longer
sentient—is different from mercy suicide in the eyes of the law. The letter of the law simply does
not recognize mercy as a defense to murder: it regards all deliberate killings as murder, whether
done in the name of love or hate. But suicide is not a crime, though in some religions, it is
regarded as a sin.
The line between mercy suicide and mercy killing is not always clear. Sometimes it is simply a
function of timing or happenstance. When what was originally intended as an unassisted mercy
suicide cannot be completed without the help of others, it becomes, in the eyes of a prosecutor, a
criminal mercy killing.”
What began as a clear case of mercy suicide by Patricia Rosier ended up with the trial of her
husband, Peter, for first-degree murder, conspiracy to murder, and attempted murder. The
prosecutor sought the death penalty, analogizing the crime to “a serialized gang murder.”
The basic facts were not in dispute, but the legal consequences of those facts gave rise to one of
the most contentious and emotional cases in Florida legal history.
After being told she had incurable cancer and had only weeks to live in excruciating pain, Patricia
made the fateful decision to pick the time and circumstances of her death, not wanting to leave it
to the unpredictable clock of the cancer. When she told her husband of her decision, Peter said
7° There is a third category that combines mercy killings with mercy suicides. In another one of my cases, a
mother engaged in the combined act of trying to kill her autistic and sexually abused son and trying to kill herself.
She succeeded in the former and failed in the latter. She reasonably believed that the child’s biological father was
repeatedly abusing the 8 year old autistic boy and that her former husband was planning to kill her, which would
leave the child in the hands of his father.
This phenomenon too has a name: altruistic filicide-suicide. At bottom it is a genre of mercy killing, although one
with possible legal defenses of necessity (choice of evils) and justification (killing to protect her son). That case is
pending as I write these words.
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