BOSTON -- This is the question Jack Kevorkian posed at the very end of his fifth trial: "Just look at me . . . . Do you see a murderer?" He asked this as if murder were an image, not an action. As if the jury, which found him guilty Friday of second-degree murder, were just another focus group.

But what do the rest of us see when we look at Kevorkian? A medical "hit man" in the words of the prosecutor, "with a bag of poison to do his job"? A Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King, in Kevorkian's words, who put doctor-assisted death on the national agenda?Do we see the death deliveryman who sent Tom Youk to the hereafter with a chilling "Okey-doke"? The publicity hound who handed a videotape to "60 Minutes"? The martyr of the right to die? Or the "fool" who had himself as a client during this trial?

Last November, sitting with Mike Wallace, this defrocked pathologist dared the courts to try him again: "Either they go or I go . . . . This issue has to be raised to the level where it's finally decided."

In his desire to stay in the limelight and in the face of authorities, he crossed -- no, leapt -- over the line from passive to active euthanasia, from assisted suicide to what some call mercy killing and others call murder.

But in the courtroom there was only one identity that mattered: whether or not Jack Kevorkian is a murderer. The irascible Kevorkian forced us, again, into a theater of legal absurdity, a place where the law disconnects from reality.

Murderer? Do you need a victim to be a murderer? Tom Youk is described in news stories as a former race car driver as if that said something about his independent, strong will. He is shown on that infamous videotape, stricken with Lou Gehrig's disease, ready to die.

His wife denied in court, out of earshot of the jury, that the word "kill" was ever uttered. "Ugly word," she said, "Never. Never came up in conversation. Our conversation was about ending his suffering." He was afraid of dying by choking. But these arguments were not admissible.

Murderer? In the eyes of the law, the prosecutors insisted, Tom Youk was no different from a healthy stranger shot on a street corner. And in the eyes of the law, you cannot consent to your own murder.

Of course, in closing arguments, prosecutor John Skrzynski acknowledged finally, "It would be hard for you to disregard Tom Youk's medical condition when you look at the videotapes back in the jury room . . . but his medical condition is not what is at issue here."

He said, "The law does not look at the victim and say, 'Does the victim have a quality of life that's worth protecting?' "

But there is a problem with the "eyesight" of the law. It doesn't allow for nearly as much peripheral vision as our human eyes do. The law in this case doesn't take in the background scenery of human misery; it filters out the complexity of those who would assess their own "quality of life."

I am no fan of Jack Kevorkian. Neither the man nor his methods. He has been, to put it mildly, a thorn in the side of both the law and the assisted suicide movement. I don't trust his judgment or his free-lance assessment of the 130 patients whose deaths he assisted.

But nevertheless, this was no garden variety murder. However deeply you look into them, the "eyes of the law" are too narrow for justice.

The law offered the jurors only two options: guilty or innocent. The guilty verdict -- second-degree murder -- may send Kevorkian to jail. He could be in jail far longer than Tom Youk would have remained alive without him. An innocent verdict would have nullified the law on murder and left Dr. Jack on the loose with a syringe.

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After Kevorkian's star turn on "60 Minutes," I contrasted our own attitude to that of Holland. Two years ago, reporting on doctor-assisted death in that small country, I learned the word "gedogen." It's how the Dutch describe the ethical gray zone for something that is illegal but allowed. In Holland, some 2.4 percent of the deaths are assisted by doctors. They don't draw the same line between active and passive euthanasia. What they do have is a very careful set of guidelines for terminally ill and suffering patients.

But here we have trouble finding a way to tolerate and circumscribe the gray zone. Jack Kevorkian was not a "hit man." But as he admitted, "Thomas Youk's death was a result of my action."

Once again we are supposed to choose black or white: mercy or killing, guilty or innocent. Murder? What if we had guidelines instead of hard lines?

The Boston Globe

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