[JURIST] A Dutch court on Wednesday cleared a man of all criminal charges for assisting his 99-year-old mother to commit suicide. An important goal of the case was to set further precedents for assisted suicide in the Netherlands [BBC backgrounder], a country where the act is already legal in certain situations. In 2008 Albert Heringa had been watching his mother suffer for quite some time. After giving her enough pills for a fatal dose and killing her, he was found guilty by a trial court, but received no punishment. The written judgment of the appeals court in overturning the decision stated [AP report] that Heringa had to decide between following the law against assisted suicide and following his “unwritten moral duty” to give his mother “a painless, peaceful and dignified death.” The law permits physicians to assist in suicides under strict conditions but does not allow friends or family members to do so. Fiona Zonneveld of the Dutch Association for Voluntary Euthanasia stated, “This is a step in the direction we want to go. … Many people who consider their lives completed want to be helped by their loved ones. We think that should be allowed.” Prosecutors will review the ruling to see if it should be appealed to a higher court, stating, “Assisting suicide according to the conditions laid out in the euthanasia law is and remains, in the view of the prosecution office, exclusively a task for a doctor.”

The right to die [JURIST news archive] continues to be a contentious legal issue around the world. In April a South African judge ruled [JURIST report] that a terminally ill man has a right to assisted suicide with no legal or professional consequences for the participating doctor. In February cancer patient Christie White and five physicians in California filed a lawsuit [JURIST report] in San Francisco County Superior Court challenging a state ban on physician-assisted suicide for mentally competent terminally ill patients. Also in February Colorado lawmakers declined to pass a bill [JURIST report] that would have permitted medically assisted suicide for terminally-ill patients. In September 2014 a Belgian man serving a life sentence was granted the right to be euthanized [JURIST report] after spending the previous 30 years in prison.