A British woman with multiple sclerosis is to go to the High Court in October to seek assurance that her husband will not be prosecuted if he helps her travel to Switzerland to end her life.
Debbie Purdy, 45, was given the go ahead last week to apply for a judicial review of the refusal by the director of public prosecutions, Ken Macdonald, to spell out any official policy on prosecuting relatives and friends who assist a loved one who commits suicide in Switzerland. Assisted suicide is legal there, and some 92 terminally ill British people have been helped to die by the Swiss organisation Dignitas. In Britain, helping someone to commit suicide is a crime punishable by up to 14 years in prison.
Some friends and relatives who have gone along on the journey have been questioned by police, but so far none have been prosecuted.
Ms Purdy, from Bradford, says she needs to know what steps could lay her Cuban born husband, Omar Puente, open to prosecution. Without the assurance that he will not face jail she will have to make the trip much sooner, while still capable of doing everything herself.
The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children announced that it would seek to intervene in the case to present arguments against euthanasia and assisted suicide. It intervened in the case of Diane Pretty, who died in 2002 from motor neurone disease after an unsuccessful legal battle to obtain immunity from prosecution for her husband if he helped her to die in Britain.
Jeremy Johnson, for the director of public prosecutions, submitted that Ms Purdy’s case was unarguable because no specific policy on assisted suicide existed and there was no legal obligation on the director to publish one. He also argued that her attempt to have the law clarified under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights—the right to respect for private and family life—was blocked by a ruling of the European Court of Human Rights in Diane Pretty’s case.
Lord Justice Latham, sitting with Mr Justice Nelson, said that the “nature and sensitivity” of the case justified letting it go ahead. “Without wishing to give Ms Purdy any optimism that her arguments will ultimately succeed,” the judge said, she had an arguable case that should go to a full hearing.
Ms Purdy said she was “delighted” with the decision. “If the DPP [director for public prosecutions] does clarify that my husband will not be prosecuted for accompanying me to Dignitas, I will be able to wait until I’m ready to go.
“I want to wait until the last possible moment—if I can no longer bear being alive—but I cannot do that while there is a chance my husband will be prosecuted.”
Sarah Wootton, chief executive of Dignity in Dying, which is supporting her case, said, “We hope that common sense prevails and that the judicial review will clarify the law, so that people considering travelling to Dignitas will know where they stand.”