Editorial: Legal mercy killing just not feasible

A jury in the High Court at Wanganui had no option but to find Lesley Martin guilty of attempting to murder her dying mother. Their verdict could not be otherwise, given that New Zealand has no defence of diminished responsibility. Justice John Wild had asked the jury's five women and seven men to put aside their feelings about "the emotive issue of euthanasia" and to base their decision on facts and the law. They were able to accomplish that in a relatively short time.

That is not to say that the jury, and the wider public, have no sympathy for Martin. Caring for people with terminal or incurable illnesses can be the most taxing of ordeals. In Martin's case, it induced a severe case of stress and exhaustion. Certainly it is possible to understand her behaviour, and to believe that she was acting out of the best motives. But as the law stands it is impossible to condone it.

Even before her trial, Martin had chosen to make herself a martyr to the cause of voluntary euthanasia. Others have shared her ordeal, but none has chosen to write about it in lengthy and emotional detail. Her book, To Die Like a Dog, effectively raised the ante in a society already divided over whether people with terminal illnesses should have the right to die. Parliament sidestepped the issue last year, declining by a narrow margin to send a private member's Death with Dignity Bill to a select committee. That was a lamentable decision because voluntary euthanasia raises daunting moral, ethical and legal issues that demand parliamentary examination.

The campaign of Martin and Exit NZ, the euthanasia group founded by her, stumbles on that web of issues. Most fundamentally, a state that denies itself the death penalty will surely always find it hard to cede to the individual the right to take a life. And what if such a right were to be granted? Often, a person wishing to end his or her suffering is in no fit condition to make such a decision.

Likewise, a person, or family, wishing to end a loved one's suffering might not always have the purest of motives. Some may wish to end their own nursing ordeal; others may have the basest of inducements. Voluntary euthanasia on a carte blanche basis is too dangerous a concept even to contemplate.

Equally, devising a robust euthanasia regime, complete with adequate safeguards, seems hardly feasible. The question of intent will always overhang a mercy killing. Even if New Zealand introduced a defence of diminished responsibility in such cases - premeditated killing without malice, say - the legal situation would be extremely difficult.

Inevitably, motives would be dissected to the nth degree. Inevitably, the courtroom test would be as fraught as the ordeal that preceded it. Most pertinently, the subject of an abuse of such a law would not be there to witness the aftermath.

Proponents of legalised euthanasia are fond of emphasising that it is only for people who are in great pain and have no prospect of recovery. Safeguards could be built in, they say, and it would not become an invitation to assisted suicide. But, quite simply, it appears too difficult to create a system so robust that it cannot be abused - one that, in particular, would not be seized upon by those lacking respect for the lives of the old and the ill.

Today there is a grey area bordering on mercy killing. When pain becomes insufferable and death is imminent, some doctors are prepared to administer an overdose of painkillers. If loved ones know, they will not be inclined to bemoan the doctor's act. But this should never be confused with the granting of a legal right to administer drugs with the specific intention of ending a person's life. That would be going too far. As the law stands, Lesley Martin went that step too far.