Court Opinion

ID: 9670314
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:18:49.070594+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:03.845185
License: Public Domain

Saad, J.
(concurring). I concur in the result of the majority opinion and write separately to express my view on this important topic.
i
NATUKE OF THE CASE
We deal here with the important legal question whether the trial court should have enjoined Dr. Kevorkian from helping others to kill themselves. Because respect for life and for the rule of law goes to the heart of our nation’s traditions and the principles we live by, I believe that we must prohibit any person from placing himself above the law by helping people to kill themselves. Arid, although the judiciary ordinarily will refrain from enjoining criminal misconduct because to do so would appear superfluous, courts must act when someone threatens to violate the rule of law by helping others to kill themselves. The courts must and should act to preserve the sanctity of life and to protect life and preserve the rule of law and respect therefor.
*609II
PACTS
I concur in the majority’s recitation of the facts; however, I believe that the following facts deserve emphasis.
Significantly, in response to the unlawful conduct at issue, the Legislature passed a bill outlawing assisted suicide, 1993 PA 3, and the Governor signed the bill into law that same day. MCL 752.1027; MSA 28.547(127). The Michigan Supreme Court has since both upheld the statute against various constitutional challenges and reaffirmed that one who assists another to take his life violates the criminal laws of this state. People v Kevorkian, 447 Mich 436; 527 NW2d 714 (1994). Most recently, the parties have filed petitions for certiorari with the United States Supreme Court, which have been denied, sub nom Hobbins v Kelley, — US —; 115 S Ct 1795; 131 L Ed 2d 723 (1995). It is against this backdrop of legal developments that reaffirmed the illegality of assisted suicide that we now affirm the decision of the trial court.
m
ISSUE
Should a court of general jurisdiction use its extraordinary injunctive powers to prohibit someone from helping another to kill himself where such conduct is both threatened and criminal?
IV
ANALYSIS
Though rare, courts have used injunctions against repeated and threatened criminal conduct. *61042 Am Jur 2d, Injunctions, § 157, p 917; State ex rel Turner v United-Buckingham Freight Lines, Inc, 211 NW2d 288 (Iowa, 1973); Chicago v Larson, 31 Ill App 2d 450; 176 NE2d 675 (1961); United States v U S Klans, Knights of Ku Klux Klan, Inc, 194 F Supp 897 (MD Ala, 1961); Garfield Twp v Young, 340 Mich 616; 66 NW2d 85 (1954).
But why do so here? Because the sanctity of life and the rule of law are, at one and the same time, the most cherished and vulnerable principles of our society and both are directly challenged and would be undermined by the threatened conduct if left unchecked.
On the other hand, compassion for those dying painfully and the concept of individual choice convince some citizens to support euthanasia. Combine these powerful forces with a climate of situational ethics in a world where matters of life and death have become more decisional than natural and to some euthanasia becomes a moral imperative. However, the people of Michigan, through its Legislature, Governor, and Supreme Court, have stated unambiguously that helping another to kill himself is criminal. Therefore, the issue raised by threatened violations of our laws against assisted suicide is: What is the proper response of the courts?
And, it is the answer to this question that mandates that we uphold the trial court’s injunction against Dr. Kevorkian’s helping others to kill themselves.
The judiciary cannot avoid its responsibility to address questions of life and death. Quill v Koppell, 870 F Supp 78 (SD NY, 1994); Compassion in Dying v Washington, 49 F3d 586 (CA 9, 1995). Like it or not, these fundamental issues end up before judges who admittedly are more comfortable with and able to answer evidentiary rather than mor*611tality issues. Yet, when faced with threatened violations of life and law, courts cannot remain adiaphorous, particularly where, as here, defendant’s conduct strikes at the very heart of both. Quill, supra; Compassion in Dying, supra.
Indeed, it is the concomitant centrality and fragility of the principles of sanctity of life and respect for the law,1 combined with the frequency and ferocity of attacks on these principles, that oblige this Court to place its equity powers squarely on the side of life and law. And this is especially true where, as here, both of these cherished traditions are threatened with one seduc-. tively insidious act. So, we affirm the trial court’s order to Dr. Kevorkian to obey the law._

 Judge Noonan recognized the paramount importance of the principles of the sanctity of life and respect for the law in Compassion in Dying, supra at 591:
In the two hundred and five years of our existence no constitutional right to aid in killing oneself has ever been asserted and upheld by a court of final jurisdiction. Unless the federal judiciary is to be a floating constitutional convention, a federal court should not invent a constitutional right unknown to the past and antithetical to the defense of human life that has been a chief responsibility of our constitutional government.