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Acting · 1928–2011 · Pontiac, Michigan, USA
Murad Jacob 'Jack' Kevorkian (May 26, 1928 – June 3, 2011), also known by the nickname "Dr. Death", was an American pathologist and euthanasia proponent. He publicly championed a terminal patient's right to die by physician-assisted suicide, embodied in his quote, "Dying is not a crime". He said that he assisted at least 130 patients to that end.
In the November 22, 1998, broadcast of CBS News' 60 Minutes, he allowed the airing of a videotape he made on September 17, 1998, which depicted the voluntary euthanasia of Thomas Youk, 52, who was in the final stages of Lou Gehrig's disease. After Youk provided his fully informed consent (a sometimes complex legal determination made in this case by editorial consensus) on September 17, 1998, Kevorkian himself administered Thomas Youk a lethal injection. This was highly significant, as all of his earlier clients had reportedly completed the process themselves. During the videotape, Kevorkian dared the authorities to try to convict him or stop him from carrying out mercy killings. Youk's family described the lethal injection as humane, not murder.
He was tried four times for assisting suicides between 1994 and 1997, being acquitted the first three times and the fourth ending in a mistrial. In 1998, he was arrested and tried for murder after broadcasting the voluntary euthanasia of a man named Thomas Youk who had Lou Gehrig's disease, or ALS. He was convicted of second-degree murder in 1999 and sentenced to a 10-to-25-year prison sentence.
Reportedly terminally ill with Hepatitis C, which he contracted in the 1960s, Kevorkian was expected to die within a year in May 2006. After applying for a pardon, parole, or commutation by the parole board and Governor Jennifer Granholm, he was paroled for good behavior on June 1, 2007. He had spent eight years and two and a half months in prison. He was released on parole on June 1, 2007, on condition he would not offer advice about, participate in, or be present at the act of any type of euthanasia to any other person, nor that he promote or talk about the procedure of assisted suicide.
He had struggled with kidney problems for years. He was diagnosed with liver cancer, which "may have been caused by hepatitis C," according to his longtime friend Neal Nicol. He was hospitalized on May 18, 2011, with kidney problems and pneumonia. His condition rapidly worsened and he died from a thrombosis on June 3, 2011