I don't understand this paragraph in this news article...

Factual Questions
1

From here:

http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,4023034%5E2,00.html

“Supporters of Mrs Crick have also sold keys to her house over the Internet in a bid to frustrate attempts by police to find those present at her death and charge them with assisting her suicide.”

Eh?

2

It’s a publicity stunt. As you aware there has been a continuing campaign for assisted suicide/ voluntary euthanasia in Australia. It reached a high water mark a few years ago with the Northern Territory’s legalisation and the Kevin Andrew’s organised Federal overturning of same.

As the article states

The idea behind this woman’s suicide is to mock this state of affairs. She wants to kill herself and she wants family and friends there with her. The law allows her to kill herself, but only in a lonely and undignified way.

Distributing keys makes the police’s job a little tougher: does everyone who has a key become a suspect because they have access to the property? The police presumably don’t want to be in the room harassing this woman as she tops herself, but how are they to do their job if hundreds of people are at least in principle suspected of attending her death? Is emotionally supporting the woman itself assisting her suicide?

But basically the keys allow people to show their support and garner a lot of media attention.

3
  1. Presumably it is illegal to assist suicide.
  2. By not acting, you might be seen to be assisting suicide.

In fact, the article says this:

  1. I suppose the police might contend that those with keys, who would not normally have keys to her house, had been issued them to let themselves in and watch (maybe so that no one person was “inviting” the others in?).
  2. Therefore, by distributing the keys to loads of people, this argument can be invalidated - prove I was one of the 20 out of 500 possibles.

Although, I think you’d have a job proving I was there just 'cause I had a key, but you never know what quirky laws there might be downunder :wink: .

4

Ahh, I see. I understand what the issue was about, I just didn’t understand what the “keys” bit was all about.

Thank you for clearing it up.

5

Or you could just leave the door unlocked.