Germany: No punishment if assisted suicide based on patient's request

Germany’s Supreme Court has issued a landmark ruling that an assisted suicide cannot be punished if it is carried out based on a patient’s prior request.

The court acquitted a lawyer yesterday, who advised his client in 2007 to cut the tube feeding her mother, who had been in a non-responsive coma for five years. A lower court had handed the lawyer a nine-month suspended sentence.

The high court said the then-71-year-old woman had expressed the wish not to be kept alive under such circumstances in 2002, before falling into the coma.

German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger welcomed the ruling as a major step toward respecting an individual’s free will.