The foreman of the jury that acquitted Dr. Jack Kevorkian is a Methodist bishop who appealed in a newspaper column for legalized assisted suicide following his father's struggle with bone cancer.
United Methodist Bishop Donald Ott said he was surprised that he was kept on the panel. But he believes the verdict would have been the same without him and still thinks the state should allow some form of assisted suicide."I would like to see a public policy developed that allows for assistance in death with the development of carefully drawn guidelines and procedures, which I am convinced Dr. Kevorkian doesn't have at this point," Ott said Saturday.
In a case that turned on whether Kevorkian's intent was to relieve suffering or to kill, the jury found him not guilty Friday in the deaths of Merian Frederick, 72, and Dr. Ali Khalili, 61. They died in 1993 by inhaling carbon monoxide through a mask.
The verdict was the second time that Kevorkian has been acquitted under a now-expired temporary law that the Michigan Legislature enacted specifically to stop him. In 1994, Kevorkian was acquitted of helping a man take his own life.
Ott, who supervises Michigan's 200,000 United Methodists, wrote a column in 1993 in a Methodist newspaper appealing for legalized assisted suicide following his father's death from bone cancer in 1992.
During jury selection, Ott said he believed "there should reside with the individual the right to determine the end of life."
He assured lawyers questioning potential jurors that he could set aside his personal feelings in deciding the case.
Prosecutor John Skrzynski told the Detroit Free Press that he had only a limited number of juror challenges and believed that Ott might not have fully made up his mind on the issue.
"I thought we had people who would listen to the evidence and follow the law in this case," he said.
Kevorkian's lawyer, Geoffrey Fieger, said he hadn't known of Ott before the trial.
Other jurors said they wrangled over whether Kevorkian intended to ease pain and suffering or intended to cause death in the cases of Khalili, who had bone cancer, and Frederick, who had Lou Gehrig's disease.
They apparently went along with Kevorkian's attorneys' focus on a exemption in the law. That provision exempted anyone who provided medication or treatment that could have hastened a patient's death - as long as the intent was to relieve pain or discomfort and not to cause death.