Assisting Persons Can Have an Agenda

By Margaret Dore, Esq., MBA

Morant

Persons assisting a suicide or euthanasia can have an agenda. Consider Tammy Sawyer, trustee for Thomas Middleton in Oregon. Two days after his death by legal assisted suicide, she sold his home and deposited the proceeds into bank accounts for her own benefit.[1] Consider also Graham Morant, convicted of counseling his wife to kill herself in Australia, to get the life insurance.[2] The Court found:

[Y]ou counselled and aided your wife to kill herself because you wanted ... the 1.4 million.[3]

Medical professionals too can have an agenda. New York physician, Michael Swango, got a thrill from killing his patients.[4] Consider also Harold Shipman, a doctor in the UK, who not only killed his patients, but stole from them and in one case made himself a beneficiary of the patient’s will.[5]

Footnotes

[1]  "Sawyer Arraigned on State Fraud Charges," KTVZ.COM, 08/16/16.
[2]  R v Morant [2018] QSC 251, Order, 11/02/18.
[3]  Id., ¶ 78. 
[4]  Charlie Leduff, “Prosecutors Say Doctor Killed to Feel a Thrill,” The New York Times, 09/07/00 (“By his own admission in his diary, he killed because it thrilled him.”)
[5]  David Batty, “Q & A: Harold Shipman,” The Guardian, 08/25/05.