Hastings International and Comparative Law Review Volume 13 Article 4 Number 1 Fall 1989 1-1-1989 A Cry for Help: A Comparison of Voluntary, Active Euthanasia Law Lynn Tracy Nerland Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/ hastings_international_comparative_law_review Part of the Comparative and Foreign Law Commons, and the International Law Commons Recommended Citation Lynn Tracy Nerland, A Cry for Help: A Comparison of Voluntary, Active Euthanasia Law, 13 Hastings Int'l & Comp. L. Rev. 115 (1989). Available at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/hastings_international_comparative_law_review/vol13/iss1/4 This Note is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Hastings International and Comparative Law Review by an authorized editor of UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. A Cry for Help: A Comparison of Voluntary, Active Euthanasia Law By LYNN TRACY NERLAND* Member of the Class of 1990 I. INTRODUCTION In 1986, a jury found seventy-five year-old Roswell Gilbert guilty of premeditated murder in the shooting death of his wife of fifty-one years. Mrs. Gilbert, who suffered from osteoporosis and Alzheimer's disease, was in chronic pain and had repeatedly asked to die. Mr. Gilbert was sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of release before his one-hundredth birthday.' Roswell Gilbert will probably die in prison. The advent of the AIDS crisis means that scenes like this are touch- ing an ever increasing spectrum of the population. The slow and painful death caused by AIDS forces many sufferers and their families to con- sider euthanasia as an alternative to continued suffering.' In this Note, the word "euthanasia" is defined as "[t]he act or prac- tice of painlessly putting to death persons suffering from an incurable and distressing disease as an act of mercy."3 * This Note is dedicated to my grandparents Alphage and Alice Hamel and Garfield and Bernadette Tracy.