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Relying on common law defences to legalise assisted dying: problems and possibilities.

In English law, a competent person has a right to refuse medical treatment, even where the refusal might result in the patient’s death, for example where this requires that physicians switch off a patient’s lifesupport. On the other hand, active voluntary euthanasia, ie the intentional killing of another person upon that person’s request, is regarded as murder, resulting in a mandatory life sentence. This is the case regardless of whether the victim consented to the killing, or even begged the defendant to end his/her life, and notwithstanding the motive with which the killing was carried out. While suicide has been decriminalised, to assist someone else’s suicide is a criminal offence, though one of lesser culpability than murder. The prosecution of such an offence depends on whether it is deemed by the DPP to be in the public interest (s.2(4) of the Suicide Act 1961). While the legal principles on assisted dying, which this article understands to include both assisted suicide and euthanasia, seem