Connecticut court rejects physicians demands to assist “suicide”

Blick v. Office of the Div. of Criminal Justice, No. CV-09-5033392 (Conn. Super. Ct, June 1, 2010)

Excerpts:

This is an action for declaratory and injunctive relief by two connecticut physicians who ask this court to allow them to engage in physician-assisted suicide. Specifically, the physicians ask this court to order the defendant State’s Attorneys not to prosecute them, or any other physician, for manslaughter under Connecticut General Statutes §53a-56 if they provide “aid in dying” by prescribing letahl medication to competent, terminally ill patients to enable those patients to kill themselves.

Connecticut General Statutes §53a-56(a) provides that “[a] person is guilty of manslaughter in the second degree when . . . (2) he intentionally causes or aids another person, other than by force duress or deception to commit suicide.”

The defendants have moved to dismiss the action . . . The case is hereby dismissed because it is barred by the doctrine of sovereign immunity and, as state above, it presents a nonjusticiable claim, one which must be decided by the Connecticut legislature, and not by the court . . . .