Letter: Dilemmas of voluntary euthanasia

Sir: Proponents of euthanasia are already arguing that the jury's verdict in the case of Dr Nigel Cox highlights the need for a change in the law to permit voluntary euthanasia. While there is sympathy for the dilemma faced by any doctor treating an incurably ill patient who is suffering acute and intractable pain, your leading article today ('Officiously to keep alive', 21 September) rightly points to the dangers of removing the protection the present law gives to the patient.

There is another aspect of the case, though, which points to the need for a different reform of the law. Because Dr Cox was only charged with attempted murder, not the full offence, Mr Justice Ognall was able to reflect the sympathy widely felt for Dr Cox in passing a 12-month suspended prison sentence. However, as Mr Butterfield QC told the jury in opening the prosecution case, it was only because Mrs Boyes's body was cremated before the facts were fully known to the authorities, so that the Crown could not prove that her death was caused by the injection of potassium chloride, that the charge was one of attempted murder, not murder.

Had the prosecution been able to prove causation and had the jury convicted of murder, the judge would have had no such discretion: the sentence would have been the mandatory one of life imprisonment, with the decision on release date resting with the Home Secretary. Indeed, one wonders whether a jury, knowing of this consequence, would have been prepared to return a guilty verdict, even if it were the true one on the evidence.

Lord Lane, while Lord Chief Justice, argued strongly for the mandatory life sentence to be abolished so that the trial judge could reflect the seriousness of the particular offence in the actual sentence passed. This, I suggest, is the reform now urgently required.

Yours faithfully,

DAVID LAMMING

London, WC2

21 September