Sun, 2008-11-23 14:37.
By: Sidhartha Banerjee, THE CANADIAN PRESS
MONTREAL - The controversial issue of assisted suicide will take centre stage in a courtroom in northeastern Quebec this week when a man charged with helping his severely ill uncle kill himself faces trial.
Stephan Dufour, 30, is charged with one count of aiding or abetting his uncle, Chantal Maltais, to commit suicide in September 2006 after the latter had badgered his family for years, confined to a wheelchair and suffering from polio.
Dufour has pleaded not guilty and looks forward to arguing his case in front of a jury, his lawyer Michel Boudreault told The Canadian Press in an interview last week.
"The time that has lapsed has allowed us to analyze the police report and to delve deeper into assisted suicide - both in Quebec and the rest of Canada," Boudreault said.
"We decided there were a number of reasons to hold a trial before a jury, for a number of reasons which we will argue in front of them."
What is particular about Dufour's case is that it has gotten as far as the trial phase - something Boudreault calls a first in Quebec's legal annals.
"A Quebec judge or jury has never been able to weigh the evidence before," Boudreault said.
"There have been people charged before, but never before has a jury been able to consider a case like this where someone has pleaded not- guilty to the charge."
The Crown alleges that Dufour helped his uncle hang himself.
WHILE IT IS NOT ILLEGAL TO COMMIT SUICIDE IN CANADA, IT IS TO HELP SOMEONE COMPLETE THE ACT.
Dufour had provided home-care assistance for Maltais for years, helping the man who had restricted mobility.
Boudreault said that Maltais suffered terribly for years and had tried for more than a decade to convince family members to end his life and had gone as far as planning his own funeral and picking a date.
Maltais, 49, had failed in several previous suicide attempts.
Jury selection in the case is scheduled for Tuesday in Alma, a town of a little over 30,000 on the shores of Lac Saint-Jean. An anticipated two-week trial is to begin immediately thereafter, Boudreault said.
Boudreault said his client believes that a question as important as assisted suicide should be mulled over by many.
Dufour was formally charged on July. 17, 2007 in Alma, after a lengthy provincial police investigation that spanned 10 months.
Boudreault is mum on whether he will present a defence during the trial.
If found guilty, Dufour could face up to 14 years in prison.
Thus far, other similar Canadian cases that have made it as far as the trial phase have generally ended without a guilty verdict, or with lesser sentences.
"We tend not to see the full extent of the Criminal Code brought to bear on to anybody," said Jocelyn Downie, a law professor at the Dalhousie Law School in Halifax.
"(This case) doesn't create a precedent that impacts across the country, but it could fit into a broader pattern."
In the most recent assisted suicide jury trial in 2004, Evelyn Martens was found not guilty in a British Columbia court of helping two people kill themselves.
And in two other recent high-profile Quebec cases, those charged pleaded guilty to and received lesser sentences.
Both those Quebec cases, coincidentally involving two different women named Marielle Houle, ended with judges handing down three-year probation sentences.
In January 2006, Marielle Houle was sentenced to three years' probation for helping her son, playwrite Charles Fariala, kill himself. Houle said she was following instructions from her son, who suffered from multiple sclerosis and died after ingesting a drug cocktail.
In another case, Andre Bergeron received three years' probation in October 2006 after pleading guilty to aggravated assault causing the death of his wife, also named Marielle Houle.
Houle suffered from Friedreich's ataxia, a degenerative disease with no known cure. Bergeron upped Houle's morphine dose before trying unsuccessfully to suffocate her with a plastic bag. She died in hospital.
Assisted suicide rose to the national agenda in the 1990s when Sue Rodriguez fought all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada for the right to kill herself.
Rodriguez, who suffered from Lou Gehrig's disease, lost in a split decision but killed herself anyway with the help of an unidentified physician in 1994.
The Dufour case could serve to renew public pressure to reopen the debate to regulate assisted suicide. Downie said the appetite for public debate is there, even if there might not be in Ottawa with the Conservatives in power.
As such, activists on both sides of the assisted-suicide debate will be watching the fallout from the Dufour case.
The Right to Die Society of Canada's Ruth von Fuchs said Quebec has always been a hot zone for debate, pointing to Bloc MP Francine Lalonde. She plans to reintroduce a bill which would amend the Criminal Code to allow, under specific conditions, seriously ill people to end their lives.
"Quebec is one of the leaders in this whole area. When polls are taken, the support for aid in dying is strongest in Quebec," von Fuchs said.
Alex Schadenberg of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition of Canada, which lobbies against assisted suicide, says surveys his group has conducted show the Canadian public tends to waffle on the issue.
"The Canadian people are not hardened on the issue," Schadenberg said.
"This is an important case, I'd like to see where it goes and the decision . . . will affect all other future cases."
http://www.cfrb.com/node/832298
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