Dr Jack Kevorkian Barred from Assisting in Suicides (1991)
On February 5, 1991, Dr. Jack Kevorkian was barred from assisting in suicides using his self-invented "suicide machine." He called his device a "Thanatron," which literally means "death machine." Kevorkian’s machine was used to pump a fatal dose of drugs into a person’s body. Kevorkian would provide the machine and the drugs, and his patients would actually flip the switch.
In December of 1990, Kevorkian was charged with first-degree murder in the case of Janice Adkins, 54, who had Alzheimer's disease and killed herself using Kevorkian’s machine. Adkins was the first person to successfully use Kevorkian’s Thanatron. The case was dismissed, however, because Michigan did not have a law against assisted suicide.
On February 5, 1991, Dr. Kevorkian was charged in a civil case that was brought by prosecutors in an attempt to prevent him from using his machine or building another one. Kevorkian was barred from assisting in suicides, and his medical license was revoked. Incidentally, the revocation of his medical license would be the basis upon which he would be convicted of second-degree murder years later, in 1999.
After the trial in 1991, Kevorkian could no longer use the Thanatron because a medical license was required to obtain the necessary drugs. He later invented another machine, which he called the Mercitron ("mercy machine") that used a fatal amount of carbon dioxide. Currently, Kevorkian is out on parole after serving 8 years of his 10-25 year sentence, and claims to have assisted in the suicide of more than 130 people.