HB 160 Will Create the Perfect Crime

A.  “Even if a Patient Struggled, Who Would Know?”

HB 160 has no required oversight over administration of the lethal dose.[1] In addition, the drugs used are water or alcohol soluble, such that they can be injected into a sleeping or restrained person without consent.[2] Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director for the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, puts it this way:
With assisted suicide laws in Washington and Oregon [and with HB 160], perpetrators can . . . take a “legal” route, by getting an elder to sign a lethal dose request. Once the prescription is filled, there is no supervision over administration. Even if a patient struggled, “who would know?”  (Emphasis added).[3]
B. The Death Certificate Will List a Terminal Illness as the Cause of Death, Which Will Prevent Prosecution for Murder

HB 160 states:
The death certificate must list the underlying terminal illness as the cause of death. (Emphasis added).[4]
The significance of requiring a terminal illness to be listed as the cause of death is that it creates a legal inability to prosecute. The official legal cause of death is a terminal illness (not murder) as a matter of law. 

HB 160 will create the perfect crime.

By Margaret Dore, Esq., MBA, President
Choice is an Illusion, a nonprofit corporation
opposed to assisted suicide and euthanasia worldwide

Footnotes

[1]  See HB 160 in its entirety, at http://legis.delaware.gov/BillDetail?LegislationId=25707
[2]  In Oregon, the drugs used include Secobarbital, Pentobarbital  (Nembutal) and Phenobarbital, which are soluble in water and alcohol.  See  http://www.drugs.com/pr/seconal-sodium.html and http://www.drugs.com/pro/nembutal.html.  Phenobarbital is soluble in alcohol.  See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2977013
[3]  Alex Schadenberg, Letter to the Editor, “Elder abuse a growing problem,” The Advocate, Official Publication of the Idaho State Bar, October 2010, page 14
[4]  HB § 2504B (12)(b).