Me and my girlfriend were talking about this case and this question cropped up. Long story short, a man recently (2 years ago) diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease wants to donate his organs, but instead of waiting 10 years to do it when they might have already failed, he wants to donate them now. That is, Gary Phebus wants to go on the operating table today and get all his organs cut out and given to people who need them.
Morally I support him, but we were talking about the legalities of assisted suicide, and she raised the question in the title. I’d never heard of such a law before - I know that suicide itself is a crime, but that’s an absurd law because you can’t prosecute somebody who is successful in the commission of it. So, our question is:
If somebody witnesses the preparation for a suicide, are they legally required to do anything? If so, what?
“Preparation” can be writing a note, or telling somebody they’re going to, or setting up the chair and noose, or whatever else indicates it’s about to happen. The jurisdiction Mr. Phebus is under is Georgia, USA, but I’d be interested to hear about the law around this in any state or country.
Lastly this isn’t a request for personal legal or medical consultation, you ANAL, etc., etc. As far as we know we don’t know anybody who wants to kill themselves and if we did we wouldn’t let the answer here influence our response.
Since no one has yet answered this, I’ll give you what I’m pretty sure is the answer. No, in general. Exceptions would include situations like parents who have an affirmative responsibility to protect their children. Others with this responsibility probably varies from state to state, but might include teachers, social workers, medical professionals.
Another case when the answer might be yes is if the person were responsible in some way for the situation like lying to someone about something extremely depressing.
he could go to a country that allows assisted suicide and suicide is legal, the US is not the only country in the world with an organ donor program. Go there, take a gun and blow your brains out sitting in front of the local hospital. They can wheel him right in and harvest him. [or pick whatever form of suicide that leaves the organs good for harvest]
It strikes me as unlikely that any organ transplant agency would accept the organs of somebody who had killed himself for the specific purpose of donating his organs. It’s the kind of thing that brings organ transplantation into disrepute, and fans the fears of some that they might rush to harvest your organs before you’re really dead.
I think you should reexamine that belief. Both Wikipedia and Cecil himself contradict you. In fact in the United States two states (Oregon and Washington) have passed laws making assisted suicide legal if certain conditions are met.
Good point. Even if the autopsy procedure itself did not compromise the organs, the delay involved in arranging and holding the autopsy probably would. For obvious reasons, you couldn’t harvest the organs before the autopsy.
It would depend on the disease, cause of death and whether the organs in question were affected at the time of death. Corneas are usable more frequently than livers, AIUI.
That’s not assisting suicide, that’s frankly deliberate killing of someone. That’s not legal anywhere (well, governments can execute people, but other than that, no)
Actually, those laws have been repealed, and it wasn’t to prosecute the successful but rather the UNsuccessful would-be suicide. Because jailing someone with mental illness makes so much sense, but let’s not go there…
In the US no, you are not obligated to save someone from harm, or render aid, even if the harm is self-inflicted. This would not, by the way, stop the family of a suicide from suing you over the matter, it’s just that you wouldn’t be breaking a law. To the best of my knowlege this applies everywhere in the US.
My understanding is that in France you ARE obligated to render aid to someone in distress, which may in fact mean you are obligated to act if you know someone is planning suicide.
I seem to recall a case from a few decades ago where some guy called the local media (in the US) and said he was going to set himself on fire to protest something or other. Cameras came and sure enough the guy doused himself with gasoline and lit himself on fire. The cameramen did not stop him…just filmed it a bit then went and put him out.
The only fallout was the cameramen being criticized for filming the thing and not stopping the guy (not to mention the presence of the cameras gave the guy the impetus to go ahead) but AFAIK there were no legal repercussions (just ethical ones).
I’m thinking along the lines of: I know Jim is depressed about losing his job. He has young children whom he is having difficulty providing for. He’s just gotten a new job and is on initial probation. I lie to him and tell him he’s lost his new job knowing this may rive him over the edge to commit suicide. I suspect in that case that if I don’t tell him I was lying, and he does commit suicide, I might be criminally and civilly liable, but I don’t know.
That’s interesting. The guy wants to kill himself on television and called the stations to let them know. He waits until the camera crews arrive and only then does he do it.
If a guys says “I’m going to kill myself when you get here”, are you liable if you respond by saying “'I’m on my way”? Does it matter if you (like the TV station) have a commercial interest in getting there?
I know that, under the common law, it’s extremely rare that the law imposes an affirmative duty to rescue someone in peril. Obviously, some jurisdictions have modified or clarified this rule with legislation.
But, one of the classic exceptions is that you DO have a duty to attempt to rescue someone in peril, if you created the peril in the first place.
OldGuy can correct me if I’m wrong, but I think he was drawing an analogy between the classic rule on duty to rescue, and the question of whether or not there’s a duty to try and stop a suicide.
Generally, the answer is no, but if you actually did something that you knew or reasonably should have known might drive a person to suicide, you might have some legal obligation (and certainly a moral obligation) to try and stop it.
Suppose you’ve been dating someone for a really long time. Presumably, you’ve had enough arguments over the years that you know exactly what buttons you could push to really, really hurt their feelings - perhaps emotionally devastate them. Suppose that the person you’re dating is also prone to severe depression, and has occasionally talked about suicide (and you know all this). Now, suppose that you decide to break up with this person in the most cruel way possible, just going on some type of tirade that plays on every insecurity they have, and then you tell them that the world would be better off without them.
You would now have every reason to suspect that this person might commit suicide in the near future, as a direct result of your actions. In such a case, you MIGHT have some obligation to attempt to prevent it.
I was thinking that homicides required autopsy. I doubt it wouldn’t not be a homicide just because the person killed himself. But, then again, I’m not sure that last sentence made any sense.
This was the subject of a recent film, in which the main character killed himself with a jellyfish in a bathtub (there also might have been some ice in there), which supposedly would prevent revival from death, but would also not damage the donatable organs, thereby forcing the scenario without involving others…
