‘Dr Death’ released from prison
Jack Kevorkian, the man known as Dr Death, has been released from prison in the US state of Michigan after serving eight years of a 10-25 year sentence. Kevorkian helped the ill to die and was convicted in 1999 of the murder by injection of terminally ill Thomas Youk. A video of him dying was broadcast on television.
Kevorkian, who is 79 years old, was released on parole partly due to his own ill health. He has pledged not to counsel people on suicide but says he will continue to fight for the right to euthanasia. He left prison in the company of his lawyer and a reporter from CBS television.
During the 1990s the former pathologist shocked America when he insisted that patients living in pain had the right to die and claimed to have helped some 130 people to end their lives, many using his ‘mercy machine’, which delivered lethal amounts of drugs intravenously. Some of the assisted suicides were in the back of his Volkswagen van.
