Battle over right to die headed to Nashville courts
A civil rights activist who pledged to make right-to-die legislation his final fight filed a lawsuit Tuesday challenging state law that prohibits assisted suicide.
Attorney, businessman and political candidate John Jay Hooker, who is facing his own terminal diagnosis, is undeterred by the Tennessee General Assembly's choice to send the issue to summer study and is now asking a Davidson County Chancery Court judge to weigh the issue. He says the state law, which makes it a felony for a doctor or another person to assist in someone's death, violates the state constitution.
Hooker recites part of the first article of the state constitution from memory, focusing on one line: "Power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority, and instituted for their peace, safety, and happiness."
"If I'm in a state to die, it's just a question of what day and what month, and my happiness is involved, do I want to sit there in bed and be the prisoner of that pain?" Hooker said. "Does the government have the right to tell me I can't check out of this hotel? I say the government can't tell the people they can't do something that is in pursuit of their own happiness, and that doesn't involve anyone else."
He also argues there is no difference between a doctor taking away machines that support life and prescribing medications that end it.
Three doctors joined with Hooker to bring the case: Hooker's physician, Dr. Jeffrey Sosman of the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center; Dr. W. Barton Campbell, of Vanderbilt University Medical Center; and Dr. Robert Ballard, who Hooker said is in private practice in Memphis.
The lawsuit names Attorney General Herbert Slatery III, Gov. Bill Haslam and Nashville District Attorney Glenn Funk.
It cites two 2013 polls that show a majority of Americans support a person's right to die. This month, a Vanderbilt University poll found just more than half of Tennessee voters surveyed agreed doctors should be allowed to painlessly end a person's life upon request.
Hooker is 84. He was diagnosed with terminal cancer and says this fight is not just for himself. He pledged to continue to advocate for the issue in the legislature, where a bill stalled this year that would have allowed doctors to prescribe life-ending medication to a "mentally competent adult."
House Minority Leader Craig Fitzhugh, D-Ripley, and Sen. Reginald Tate, D-Memphis, sponsored the bill.
"We certainly hope to look more at this issue over the summer," Fitzhugh said in an email to The Tennessean. "I think, as you saw in the most recent Vanderbilt poll, there's broad bipartisan support for allowing people to make their own end-of-life care decisions. John Jay has fought his entire life for the personal liberty of others; I think we owe him this conversation."
Hooker has spent his career advocating for peoples' rights. But this battle stands out to him.
"I've never had as many people stop me on the street or come up to me in restaurants and tell me, 'I want you to know I'm on your side on this,"' Hooker said. Then, he said, the strangers take time to express sympathy for Hooker's illness.
"Then they spend two or three minutes telling me about a grandfather or a friend who was a captive of an illness and how much they appreciate my efforts to do something," he said.
"It's wonderful to have something to live for, but it's also great to have something to die for. The notion that my time is limited is greatly made more pleasant by the proposition that I'm doing something worth doing."
Staff writer Dave Boucher contributed to this story. Reach Stacey Barchenger at 615-726-8968 or on Twitter @sbarchenger.