Assisting a suicide and the Forfeiture Rule
Posted on October 31, 2014
A recent Queensland case applied the rarely used Forfeiture Rule. The Forfeiture Rule is when a person who is found guilty of murder or manslaughter is prevented from receiving a benefit from the victim’s estate.
The rationale is that a person should not benefit from killing another person. However, in this recent case the court had to decide whether the Forfeiture Rule should be applied to a man found guilty of assisting his friend to commit suicide.
The Facts
Francis Ward died on 20 June 2009 and his will appointed his friend Merin Nielsen as the executor and beneficiary of his estate.
During his life, Francis suffered from a number of life threatening illnesses and had a fear of being disabled to the point where he could not function independently. Francis had decided some years before his death to take his own life to avoid that situation.
At the request and expense of Francis, Merin went to Mexico and purchased a drug called Pentobarbital. Upon his return from Mexico, Merin visited Francis at his home. Later that evening Francis was found dead and the cause of death was Pentobarbital toxicity.
Merin was convicted for having assisted Francis to commit suicide and he was sentenced to 3 years imprisonment.
The Court Decision
One of the effects of Merin’s conviction was whether Merin had forfeited his right to be the executor and beneficiary of Francis’ estate. If so, it meant that Francis’ siblings would be entitled to Francis’ estate.
Merin argued that Francis had full mental capacity when he made his decision to take the Pentobarbital. Merin also argued that when Francis took the drugs he was fully aware that Merin would benefit from his estate as the beneficiary.
However, the Judge ruled that as Merin’s crime resulted in the death of Francis his interest in the estate was forfeited. The Judge considered an English case from 1998 where it was decided that the Forfeiture
Rule was not restricted to murder and manslaughter cases; if the death was a result of a crime then the rule applied and any ethical issues concerning the perpetrator’s culpability were not to be considered.
It was noted in the court judgement that acts or threats of violence were not a prerequisite for the application of the rule and it was not relevant that the perpetrator had no motive to benefit from the deceased estate and was acting at the request of the deceased in order to ease the deceased’s pain.
The Result
The Public Trustee replaced Merin as the executor of Francis’ estate which was distributed equally between Francis’ siblings.
This case can be seen as a court’s strict application of the law to the facts of the case. The court resisted making any changes to how the Forfeiture Rule could be applied; thus, any change to the application of this rule is a task for the government.