Were the deaths, in 1978, of more than 900 Americans in Jonestown, Guyana, a mass suicide or a massacre? And were the members of the Peoples Temple, who founded the settlement, the hypnotized victims of a cult dominated by a purely evil man? In the decades since the tragedy, as it recedes from popular awareness, scholars (and not a few cranks) have argued over the answers to these questions, obvious as they may seem to anyone who knows of the event primarily through the mass media. The latest entry in the discussion is “A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception and Survival at Jonestown” by Julia Scheeres, which looks at Jonestown from the perspective of the church’s rank-and-file members.
Strictly speaking, this story is not “untold”; of the 100 or so survivors of Jonestown, a few have written their stories, and a compilation of oral and written firsthand accounts has been published. However, Scheeres used a large cache of recently released FBI files to write what she describes as the first “comprehensive history of the doomed community” to incorporate that material. She also conducted her own interviews with survivors. Above all, her account is notably levelheaded in a field where sensationalism, conspiracy theories and bizarre reasoning run free.
In particular, Scheeres wants to show that the people who died at Jonestown weren’t “brainwashed zombies,” as they have sometimes been described. She also deliberately refrains from use of the word “cult,” a term currently in disfavor with students of comparative religion. To paraphrase the Yiddish linguist Max Weinreich (who said, “A language is just a dialect with an army and navy”), they argue that the only thing distinguishing many religions from so-called cults is that the religions have more numerous and powerful members.
For those unfamiliar with the story of the Peoples Temple, Jones was a charismatic Pentecostal pastor who, in 1950s Indiana, founded a church remarkable for its commitment to racial integration and aiding the poor. In the 1960s, he persuaded much of his flock to move to a community in Northern California and, in the 1970s, the church’s headquarters was relocated to San Francisco. There, Jones continued to win converts from among the dispossessed — drug addicts, delinquents, single mothers, the elderly and the unemployed, most of them black — while also attracting educated idealists inspired by the mixture of spirituality and social justice that Jones called “apostolic socialism.”
In its early years, the Peoples Temple did many good works: running soup kitchens and food and clothing drives, rehabilitating at-risk kids, nursing junkies through the agonies of withdrawal, providing free healthcare and services to seniors. Jones also proved adept at impressing radical-chic celebrities and local politicians — the latter were particularly interested in the large blocks of obedient voters he could deliver. San Francisco Mayor George Moscone even appointed Jones to the Housing Authority, where his entourage of brawny bodyguards and cheering seniors made the meetings more exciting, if less functional.
From early on, Jones used charlatanry to gain followers and donations, figuring that he’d turn the usual revival-tent antics to the service of a “better cause.” With the assistance of trusted aides, he staged assorted healings, mind-readings and other “miracles.” He was indefatigable — mostly because he was gobbling prescription drugs, stimulants known to produce paranoia in those who abuse them. Soon he was faking assassination attempts as well as healings, and threatening to kill enemies and apostates by supernatural means. Scheeres clearly believes that Jones’ drug problems played a major role in the deterioration of the Peoples Temple from a progressive evangelical church into an authoritarian cult.
Scheeres may not want to use that word, or “brainwashed,” but her own book demonstrates the need for stronger language to describe the Peoples Temple than “new religious movement,” the “value neutral” term preferred by religious scholars. Jones and his lieutenants employed techniques of isolation, intimidation and coercion to control church members, former members and perceived enemies — like the journalists who began asking too many awkward questions in 1973, prompting Jones to set up an “agricultural mission” in the small South American nation of Guyana. Many church members went to Jonestown for what they thought would be a few months, only to find themselves stranded in the middle of a dense jungle with no funds and their passports locked in a safe by church authorities.
As Jones’ paranoia worsened and the ability of the community to sustain itself faltered, the residents — effectively prisoners — were subjected to starvation rations, public denunciations, beatings, grueling labor details and the interminable demented harangues Jones slurred into the PA system at all hours. During drills that were dubbed “white nights,” Jones put everyone on alert, braced for military attacks from the commandos he insisted were lurking just outside the fences. He kept his weary flock up until the wee hours, demanding vote after vote on the option of “revolutionary suicide,” that is, a community-wide resolution to kill themselves rather than fall into the hands of their (nonexistent) beseigers. On more than one occasion, he ordered them to drink a Kool-Aid-like punch that he pretended was poisoned, as a “test” of their loyalty.
The physical and psychological stresses Jones inflicted on his followers — many of which fall within agreed-upon definitions of torture — explain in part why they were so vulnerable to his apocalyptic hysteria. They also lived in apocalyptic times, under the shadow of the political assassinations of the 1960s and haunted by an ever-present intimation that some form of revolution might happen at any moment. Also, church members believed that “fascist America” was spying on them and plotting their deaths because federal officials really were doing just that to such groups as the Black Panthers, who considered the Peoples Temple their allies.
The triggering event for the tragedy was an investigatory expedition to the compound led by Rep. Leo Ryan in response to relatives outside the church who complained that their family members were being held captive. Although Jones customarily kept dissidents and potential defectors drugged and confined during such official visits, several residents still managed to ask Ryan to take them with him when he left. As the group boarded two small aircraft outside the settlement, some church members followed and opened fire on them, killing Ryan, three journalists and one of the defectors. At that point, Jones realized that this would be his last chance to fulfill his long-cherished, megalomaniacal fantasy of making his followers die for him.
Scheeres calls the horrors of Nov. 18, 1978, a “massacre” rather than a mass suicide, pointing out that many of the victims — exhausted and disoriented as they were when Jones ordered them once more to drink poisoned punch — resisted, especially when they realized that this time the poison was real. Some were compelled to drink at gunpoint while others were forcible injected. Twenty-four of the victims were infants who were fed the drink by adults and 150 were under the age of 10. However, the willingness of enough church members to carry out Jones’ orders — murdering their own families, friends and finally themselves — indicates that his control over much of his flock remained absolute.
They would become the largest number of American civilians to die in a single, non-natural disaster until 9/11, yet Jonestown is less well-known than, say, the Manson Family murders to many people born since 1980. It doesn’t fit into a familiar narrative or offer a politically convenient villain. Jonestown illustrates the corruptibility of both religious piety and leftist utopianism, but the left does seem to struggle with it more than conservatives. For anyone who places too much faith in the espousal of right-on ideology (and that would include a lot of academics), Jim Jones is particularly troubling: How can someone who said all the right things go so wrong?
For all the thoughtfulness of “A Thousand Lives,” Scheeres herself runs aground trying to defend Jones’ followers from being written off as suicidal sheep. “If anything, the people who moved to Jonestown were idealists,” she writes. “They wanted to create a better, more equitable society.” But it is precisely the idealists who are most likely to get sucked into a nightmare like Jonestown, because when your goal is so very beautiful, it is so very tempting to cut moral corners.
It all began back when Jim Jones told himself that for the sake of social justice, it would be OK to fake a few “miracles.” Each new act of deception or bullying simply amplified that leeway a little more, infecting the whole community. For Jones, the power to do good mutated into power for its own sake. Jonestown is the darkest reminder of how, when the ends are allowed to justify the means, the means become an end in themselves.
Four years. I nod my head in agreement as the nurse keeps talking. I am in the medical center for a routine blood draw, to track the thyroid condition I’ve lived with for most of my life. But the nurse is not talking about the levels of thyroid stimulating hormone in my blood. She is telling me about her husband, who has started to answer the phone again four years after his father died “suddenly.”
The word “suddenly,” like “unexpectedly” is code for suicide. I instantly know what she is trying to say. I live in a small town; she surely has heard about the recent sudden and unexpected deaths in my family. My brother in September, my father in March, with my mother’s cancer death right in between. Everyone in town knows the story by now. It is April.
Good Yankee girl, though, she understands stoicism and asks no questions except, “How are you doing?”
She does, however, launch into this story. She tells me how long it has taken her husband to recover from his father’s death. How many years it takes to climb back up from getting the call that takes you to the floor. She tells me how happy she is he can go out again, see family again, and answer the phone. After four years.
I look at the needle in the crook of my arm, the vial filling with my blood. I accept her Band-Aid and try to smile.
I sympathize, empathize even. But I sincerely believe it will NOT take me four years to recover. There’s no way. I have an 8-year-old son I am homeschooling. I have to be there to explain long division and spell words like “ubiquitous.” These details are my lifeline. I can’t fall apart now, even for a little while, and certainly not for years. It makes no difference that I’ve lost my entire family of origin inside six months.
***
Looking back now, I see the difference it made, though it wasn’t the one I feared. I didn’t fall apart. I kept right on going, and learned a lot about asking for help and honoring my limitations. Still, I wasn’t quite me. I measured everything by how much better it was than the day, week or month before. I noted the first time I could fall asleep without my husband in the room with me, and knew I was feeling safer. Or the first time I cried when “Sweet Child of Mine” played on the radio and I realized the numbness was fading. And later still, when I heard the song and didn’t need to cry. I became expert at measuring the distance I was traveling away from the visions of loaded ambulances and empty houses.
What I couldn’t see, though, was how far I had to go. That was probably best that way. It would be too cruel if you fully remembered what it was like to laugh, dance and sing, without being able to make your way to the dance floor, or even hear the song. Each step took a day, each song a month, until years had passed since a ringing phone signaled devastation.
The third year was the hardest. I started to see the celebrations in life again, but only to name them and move on. I could go to a concert and listen to music, but it was more accomplishment than enjoyment. Every holiday brought its haunting from seasons past; July fireworks sounded too much like guns, and I had nowhere to go at Thanksgiving. When our favorite Korean restaurant stopped serving on Thanksgiving Day, our family of three found ourselves eating pizza at Price Chopper. I had survived, but this was not the atmosphere I wanted for my son.
Then, I reached the magic number. Four years. It turns out, that nurse was exactly right. It’s been that long now and I have all of my senses back. The awakening started last summer when I visited my mother’s sisters and saw her face, my face, alive in them. And it spread when we went to my husband’s family reunion and made more connections. We discovered we were not alone.
The healing continues as I watch my son learn, cheer at his wrestling matches, and pick on his puns. I now walk by our brook and feel the pure bliss of spring sunshine on my head. I’m reading Buddhist philosophy and playing the Avett Brothers CD and telling everyone how amazing these things really are.
As it was for that long-ago nurse’s husband, one of the hardest things has indeed been answering the phone when it rings. I still hesitate. There’s always the possibility of unbearable words on the other end. Instead, I find it’s likely to be a friend excited about her newest pug puppy, or neighbors offering to bring over a cheesecake, and I am glad I answered the call.
FILE In this Aug. 10, 1991 photo, Dr. Jack Kevorkian, inventor of the controversial suicide machine, sits with his just release book, Prescription: Medicide, in Royal Oak, Mich. A lawyer and friend of Kevorkian says the assisted suicide advocate has died at a Detroit-area hospital at the age of 83. Mayer Morganroth tells The Associated Press that Kevorkian died Friday, June 3, 2011 at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, where he had been hospitalized. Kevorkian had been hospitalized since last month with pneumonia and kidney problems. (AP Photo/Lennox McLendon)(Credit: AP)
After championing the rights of the sick and suffering to get help ending their lives — and providing that “help” to scores of terminally ill patients — Dr. Jack Kevorkian died of natural causes on Friday at the age of 83.
According to Geoffrey Fieger, the lawyer who represented Kevorkian in several of his trials in the 1990s, Kevorkian was too weak to take advantage of the option he had offered others and had long wished for himself. “If he had enough strength to do something about it,” Fieger told a news conference in Southfield, Michigan, “he would have.”
If that is true, there is something almost epically tragic about the fact that a man who fought so long and hard for patients’ right to die on their own terms, wasn’t able to take advantage of this option in the end. But then who is to say “Dr. Death” didn’t simply change his mind? He’d apparently been suffering from kidney failure and pneumonia for over a month, long enough to plan his own death if he’d wanted to. He was a doctor and entirely familiar with how to end a life quickly and painlessly. And given his well-known penchant for drama and attention, you’d think he’d want to make himself exhibit A for what he believed in. (At the start of his third trial, he showed up in court wearing Colonial-era clothing to show how antiquated he thought the charges were and, after videotaping himself helping to kill a patient, he voluntarily handed the tape over to “60 Minutes.”)
The fact that Kevorkian didn’t end his own life is, to me, a potent reminder that our political beliefs are not always in the driver’s seat when it comes to death. Just as one can imagine even the staunchest anti-assisted suicide crusader wavering in the face of extreme pain and disability, I have found that certain pro-assisted suicide people seem to believe that killing oneself is actually a better option than dying naturally. Often, when I mention that I wrote a book about my mother’s decision to end her life after a long illness, people say, “Oh, well I definitely plan to do that. I’ve already made it clear that that the minute I get a disease, I want someone to take me out back and shoot me!”
I get the humor but there is a glib — even fashionable — assumption that suicide, assisted or not, is a good way to go. I want to ask: How would your kids feel if you do that? Your spouse? And how would you feel if it was them making that choice? I’m a big supporter of the Death with Dignity Laws in this country, but frankly, as long as I’m not in pain and have some quality of life, I’m planning to “go naturally,” just like Kevorkian did in the end.
The idea that ending your life is going to be easier and more straightforward than letting nature take its course is something of a happy illusion. Having witnessed both my parents dying in very different ways, I know that even the best laid plans for death can go awry. It reminds me of the “birth plan” I drafted when I was pregnant. Somehow, between planning the perfect play list and specifying that I didn’t want an episiotomy, I forgot to factor in throwing up, forgetting to breathe, and the uncontrollable urge to yell obscenities at the nurse. So much for my beautiful birthing experience.
It may be a cliche, but there really are some things we can’t control and even for strong-minded people like my mother, who was determined to plot the details of her “end,” you simply cannot know how you will feel when the day comes. In fact, my mother set and changed her “death dates” several times, discovering on the chosen day that she wasn’t quite ready to go after all.
In Bill Moyers’ PBS special on assisted suicide a few years ago (“On Our Own Terms: Moyers on Dying”), not one of the people Moyers followed actually ended up killing themselves. There was always one more event they wanted to stay alive for: a birthday, or a grandchild’s graduation. Every one of his subjects waited until it was too late and no longer had the physical capability to manage it. All, except for one woman who died from natural causes before she had a chance to take the pills she’d stockpiled. Pulling the plug turns out to not always be so easy.
Adding to the vagaries of the psyche is the unpredictability of the body. Unless you live in one of the three states where physician assisted suicide is legal (Oregon, Washington and Montana) and have access to a group like Compassion & Choices who will help make sure you are taking the right dose of drugs, chances are you will not know how to calibrate the means of death. In my mother’s case, stopping eating and drinking took far longer than she’d expected, and an attempted morphine overdose failed. Although she did ultimately manage to end her life, it was not the controlled, predictable event she’d hoped for.
I read recently that the issue of assisted suicide splits this country almost completely in half, making it an especially divisive and contentious issue. I would respectfully suggest that both sides may have lost sight of the fact that death can – and will — make a mockery of even the most carefully laid plans, the most passionately held beliefs.
And who knows, when it came down to it, maybe Jack Kevorkian simply wanted to stay alive and was hoping he might recover. Or maybe his lawyer is right and he wished someone had been there to help him speed things along. We will never know and that is as it should be. Because as politicized as it has become in this county, death is ultimately a private experience, fraught with unknowns. And Dr. Kevorkian, like all of us who support assisted suicide as a legal and moral principle, had the right to change his mind.
A lawyer and friend of Jack Kevorkian says the assisted suicide advocate has died at a Detroit-area hospital at the age of 83.
Mayer (MAY’-uhr) Morganroth tells The Associated Press that Kevorkian died Friday morning at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, where he had been hospitalized. He says nurses played classical music by Kevorkian’s favorite Johan Sebastian Bach before he died.
Kevorkian had been hospitalized since last month with pneumonia and kidney problems.
Morganroth says Kevorkian was conscious Thursday night and the two spoke about leaving the hospital and getting ready for rehabilitation.
Kevorkian was released from a Michigan prison in 2007 after serving eight years for second-degree murder. He claims to have assisted in at least 130 suicides.
The new documentary “How to Die in Oregon” opens with footage of Roger Sagner, an elderly man with advanced cancer, demanding that he be given a lethal dose of drugs. His impatience — and absolute lack of ambiguity — is startling. After swallowing a milky concoction of Seconal in one long gulp, Sagner thanks his family and the voters of Oregon “for allowing me the honor of doing myself in,” lies down on a bed under a large picture window, and begins to sing.
“I’s coming, I’s coming. Oh my head is hanging low. I hear the gentle voices calling … Old Black Joe.”
His final words? “It was easy, folks. It was easy.”
Watching this documentary (which airs on HBO this Thursday), however, was not. In fact, it took me three separate viewings to get through my advance copy. Given that my mother ended her life after struggling with Parkinson’s for many years, an experience I wrote about in my memoir, “Imperfect Endings,” I was perhaps especially predisposed to find it difficult viewing. But apparently even hardened HBO staffers couldn’t sit through the entire film, and the film’s publicity team at this year’s Sundance was astonished at the reluctance of the media to attend the screening.
This is unfortunate because, while the film does ask its viewers to be willing to be moved and, yes, saddened, “How to Die in Oregon” is a well-crafted, beautifully understated film about an important topic: whether people should have the legal right to end their lives. Without resorting to Michael Moore-type polemics, director Peter D. Richardson follows a half-dozen terminally ill people as they go about the business of planning the end of their lives under Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act. (Passed in 1994, the law makes it legal for physicians to provide “aid-in-dying” for their terminally ill patients.)
Although Richardson clearly supports individuals’ rights to end their own lives, he keeps the proselytizing — and the politics — to a minimum. Instead, he gives us a series of fly-on-the-wall scenes with patients, as well as interviews with oncologists, activists and volunteers. We see how planning for death can involve everything from the mundane (filling prescriptions, giving away one’s clothes and jewelry, even getting a final haircut), to the wrenching and the profound (tearful conversations between family members, and the final recording of a personal eulogy by an 84-year-old terminally ill broadcaster named Ray Carnay). And thankfully, we see people who, despite being in pain and close to the end, have maintained a sense of self — and even a sense of humor, although largely of the gallows variety.
But the warm, beating heart of “How to Die in Oregon” is Cody Curtis, a lovely, articulate 54-year-old wife and mother who has liver cancer. We see her taking walks with her daughter, meeting with her doctor, and joking with her husband all while stockpiling barbiturates and planning her own death. Although in good shape when the film opens, she has suffered the cruel effects of her disease and is determined not to repeat it. “I’m not going to die with the fluid oozing out of the pores in my legs,” she says in one of numerous interviews. “I’m not going to lose my hair again. I’m not going to weigh 200 pounds again. I’m not going to be humiliated with losing control of my bodily functions again.”
In short, she plans to get out while the getting is good, an attitude shared by my mother whose need for control made the Parkinson’s endgame intolerable. But unlike my family, in which my sisters and I debated about whether my mother was actually serious about ending her life, and tried to talk her out of it, the Curtis family is remarkably unified in their support. Her son, “T,” does express some trepidation about the death itself — something I could relate to — but none of them challenges her decision.
As death circles closer, Cody openly shares her shifting emotions, often moving from tears to laughter in the space of a sentence. By contrast, my mother never cried, never expressed any doubt, and never asked us how we felt about being there when she ended her life: She maintained a stoic, unsentimental attitude right to the end. And while I’ve always chalked this up to emotional reticence on her part, when Cody tells the filmmaker, “I want to model for my children a kind of grace and acceptance because I’m really scared of being a coward at the end,” I wondered if my mother was also protecting us from the burden of her ambivalence.
Of course, Cody is anything but a coward in the end and her last words — “This is so easy … I wish people knew how easy it was” – echoes Sagner’s in the beginning of the film. Although this bookending of sentiments may have been coincidental, it does highlight the film’s one-sidedness. With one notable exception, there are very few dissenting voices in “How to Die in Oregon.” That exception is Randy Stroup, a 53-year-old uninsured Oregonian with prostate cancer who was denied coverage for additional treatment by the state. In a letter to Stroup, they suggested he look into doctor-assisted suicide instead. Although the state reversed its decision after he went public, his understandable bitterness – “They’ll pay to kill me, but not to help me!” — provides a disturbing counterpoint to the rest of the film.
Having never understood the argument that laws like the one in Oregon might imperil the uninsured and disadvantaged, I found Stroup’s story eye-opening and I would have liked to hear more of a rebuttal or discussion. Also, given that assisted suicide is legal in only three states in this country and we have right-wing pundits shouting about “death panels” every time healthcare reform comes up, it would have been useful to get a better sense of the larger debate. As a strong supporter of the Death With Dignity laws, I am reluctant to give those who oppose them more of a platform, but I think the film would have benefited from their inclusion.
And yet, Richardson’s decision to eschew overt politics — both pro and con — in “How to Die in Oregon” allows him to do something more quietly radical: to show real people talking honestly with each other about their own impending deaths. In this death-phobic society where doctors offer sure-to-fail, last-ditch treatments instead of gently telling their patients to go home and prepare for death, Richardson’s film is a much-needed antidote.
FILE - In this Feb. 17, 2011 file photo, William Melchert-Dinkel, center, leaves the Rice County Courthouse in Faribault, Minn., with his attorney Terry Watkins, right, and wife, Joyce Melchert-Dinkel, after waiving his right to a jury trial. Melchert-Dinkel, 48, of Faribault, was found guilty Tuesday, March 15, 2011 of aiding the suicides of 18-year-old Kajouji of Brampton, Ontario, who jumped into a river in 2008, and 32-year-old Mark Drybrough of Coventry, England, who hung himself in 2005. (AP Photo/Robb Long, File)(Credit: AP)
Freedom of speech is no defense for a former nurse who engaged in “lethal advocacy” when he encouraged an English man and Canadian woman to kill themselves after searching for depressed people over the Internet, a Minnesota judge said in delivering a guilty verdict against the man.
The judge found William Melchert-Dinkel, 48, guilty Tuesday of two counts of aiding the suicides of Mark Drybrough, 32, of Coventry, England, who hanged himself in 2005, and Nadia Kajouji, 18, of Brampton, Ontario, who jumped into a frozen river in 2008. Melchert-Dinkel declined a jury trial and left his fate to Rice County District Judge Thomas Neuville.
Melchert-Dinkel’s attorney, Terry Watkins, said the defense was disappointed with the verdict and planned to appeal. Watkins said appellate courts will have to answer whether Melchert-Dinkel’s actions rose to the level of a crime or were protected speech in the context in which they occurred, given the defense view that the victims were already predisposed to suicide and his online statements didn’t sway them.
In his ruling, Neuville stuck mostly to a dispassionate recitation of the facts in the case. The judge again rejected the defendant’s argument that his actions amounted to free speech, affirming a pretrial ruling he issued in November. He also reaffirmed his rejection of the defense claim that Melchert-Dinkel’s online statements didn’t sway the victims.
“Melchert-Dinkel was not merely expressing ideas about suicide The court finds that defendant’s speech imminently incited the victims to commit suicide, and can be described as ‘lethal advocacy,’ which is analogous to the category of unprotected speech known as ‘fighting words’ and ‘imminent incitement of lawlessness,’” Neuville wrote.
After sentencing, which is scheduled for May 4, Watkins said, his next stop will be the Minnesota Court of Appeals, and the defense is prepared to appeal to higher courts if necessary. He said the defense didn’t dispute the facts as the judge laid them out in his 42-page ruling, but disagreed on whether they added up to proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
“We will carry this as far as judicially allowed,” Watkins said.
Minnesota’s rarely used aiding suicide law carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison and a $30,000 fine. Data from the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission show that since 1994, only six people have been sentenced on the charge. One was sent to prison for four years; the rest received local jail time, probation or both.
Rice County Attorney Paul Beaumaster said he would seek a sentence consistent with the earlier cases.
“I think justice was served,” Beaumaster said. “I think it was a just verdict based on the facts of the case, and convictions were earned on both counts.”
Prosecutors said Melchert-Dinkel, who lives in the southern Minnesota city of Faribault, was obsessed with suicide and hanging and sought out potential victims online. When he found them, prosecutors said, he posed as a female nurse, feigned compassion and offered step-by-step instructions on how they could kill themselves. Melchert-Dinkel told police he did it for the “thrill of the chase.” He acknowledged participating in online chats about suicide with up to 20 people and entering into fake suicide pacts with about 10 people, five of whom he believed killed themselves.
Drybrough’s mother, Elaine Drybrough, said she was glad the judge agreed Melchert-Dinkel was guilty. If he had been cleared, she said, it would have sent a signal to other people contemplating similar actions that encouraging suicides is permissible.
“He’s been told it’s not all right,” she said.
Kajouji’s mother, Deborah Chevalier, said she’s concerned the penalty won’t be in line with the crime and that Melchert-Dinkel’s appeal will delay a final resolution.
“I’ve said all along that a crime is just as vile and offensive whether it be committed in our own homes or over the Internet,” she said in an e-mail.
During oral arguments in February, Watkins called his client’s behavior “sick” and “abhorrent” but said it wasn’t a crime. He said Drybrough had been ill for years and went online seeking drugs to overdose, while Kajouji was going through a rough time in her life, had a miscarriage after drinking heavily and was depressed. Watkins said they were both intelligent people who wouldn’t be swayed by his client’s online “babbling.”
Beaumaster said Melchert-Dinkel’s intent was to see them die, and the law is designed to protect vulnerable people.
“That’s the point. That’s who he looked for,” he said. “He targeted individuals he knew he could have an influence on. Were they predisposed? Absolutely!”
Minnesota authorities began investigating in March 2008 when an anti-suicide activist in Britain claimed someone in the state was using the Internet to manipulate people into killing themselves.
The Minnesota Board of Nursing revoked Melchert-Dinkel’s license in 2009.
(Credit: AP) 
FILE In this Aug. 10, 1991 photo, Dr. Jack Kevorkian, inventor of the controversial suicide machine, sits with his just release book, Prescription: Medicide, in Royal Oak, Mich. A lawyer and friend of Kevorkian says the assisted suicide advocate has died at a Detroit-area hospital at the age of 83. Mayer Morganroth tells The Associated Press that Kevorkian died Friday, June 3, 2011 at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, where he had been hospitalized. Kevorkian had been hospitalized since last month with pneumonia and kidney problems. (AP Photo/Lennox McLendon)(Credit: AP) 
Jack Kevorkian speaking at UCLA. 
Cody Curtis 
FILE - In this Feb. 17, 2011 file photo, William Melchert-Dinkel, center, leaves the Rice County Courthouse in Faribault, Minn., with his attorney Terry Watkins, right, and wife, Joyce Melchert-Dinkel, after waiving his right to a jury trial. Melchert-Dinkel, 48, of Faribault, was found guilty Tuesday, March 15, 2011 of aiding the suicides of 18-year-old Kajouji of Brampton, Ontario, who jumped into a river in 2008, and 32-year-old Mark Drybrough of Coventry, England, who hung himself in 2005. (AP Photo/Robb Long, File)(Credit: AP) 
