VANCOUVER, B.C. — An Australian right-to-die group that wants to teach seriously ill patients how to end their lives has been turned away by the Vancouver public library over concerns that such an event could violate laws that prohibit assisted suicide. Melbourne-based Exit International wants to hold a workshop in November that would include information about which drugs patients can take to kill themselves, how to obtain them and how to take them. The Vancouver Public Library initially took the booking, but has since cancelled after receiving legal advice from its lawyers and local police, said central librarian Paul Whitney. "The library was told in what, for lawyers, I would describe as fairly unambiguous language that the program as presented by Exit International would be in contravention of the Criminal Code," Whitney said Monday. Federal law makes it a crime to counsel, aid or abet someone to kill themselves.
Kay, an 89-year-old resident of a North Vancouver nursing home, had travelled with family to Zurich, Switzerland, to a clinic called Dignitas. The mother of seven children was in a wheelchair, suffering from a terminal condition called spinal stenosis, which meant her body, as she said, was "totally collapsing."
Jacques Delisle, a retired judge charged with first-degree murder in connection with the death of his wife, has been released on bail. The former Quebec Court of Appeal judge appeared at the Quebec City courthouse for a bail hearing on Wednesday.
A Minnesota judge on Wednesday sentenced a former nurse to nearly a year's worth of jail time — spread out over the next decade — for helping to persuade two people, including a Brampton, Ont., woman, to kill themselves. William Melchert-Dinkel, 48, was ordered to serve 360 days total behind bars, but only 320 of those days will be served consecutively. For the remainder of the sentence, he will be forced to return to prison for two-day spells every year for a decade on the anniversaries of both of his victims' deaths.