Legislators want to act after court strikes suicide law

By Christopher Quinn

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Key legislators want to rewrite Georgia law after the state Supreme Court struck down the General Assembly's last attempt to criminalize assisted suicides.

"The Supreme Court has ruled, and now it is up to us," Majority Whip Edward Lindsey, R-Atlanta, said. "I certainly hope this would be something that we address this session."

Sen. Bill Hamrick, R-Carrollton, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee also said he hopes legislators can rewrite and pass a law this session that will stand up to court scrutiny

There are 24 working days remaining for the Legislature, and a bill would have to pass one chamber and make it to the other within 14 working days to have a chance at being signed into law.

Georgia passed the suicide law in 1994 to punish people like the late Jack Kevorkian, a Michigan pathologist who oversaw the suicides of more than 100 people.

The state Supreme Court said Georgia's law is unconstitutional because it does not prohibit all assisted suicides, but rather criminalizes only those in which someone advertises or offers to assist in a suicide and then takes steps to help carry it out. That violated free speech rights, the unanimous decision said.

The ruling means four members of the Final Exit Network, charged in Forsyth County in connection with the 2008 suicide of 58-year-old John Celmer, will not stand trial. He killed himself two years after he had been diagnosed with cancer.