The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia

Early Christian history is of particular relevance to our analysis because of its influence on the common law’s initial view of suicide. Writing in the mid-thirteenth century, Bracton, one of the common law’s earliest authorities,°* endorsed the Roman statute that held that a felon intentionally taking his life to escape punishment by the state was subject to having both his movable goods and real property confiscated.°° In defiance of Roman statutes, however, Bracton added that one who deliberately kills himself “in weariness of life or because he is unwilling to endure further bodily pain” should also suffer con- fiscation of his movable goods, though not his real property.5° Only suicides induced by insanity—undertaken by persons incapable of appreciating the sig—- nificance of their actions (and, thus, incapable of forming an intent to kill) escaped punishment: “that a madman is not liable is true''>7

Historians Michael MacDonald of the University of Michigan and Terence Murphy of American University have asserted that Bracton included “sheer weariness with life along with the mental. defects that excused self-slaying.”>® But this is a questionable reading of the record. Under Bracton’s formulation, “sheer weariness” with life reduced the penalty for suicide to the confiscation of movable goods rather than all real and personal property, but, quite unlike suicides induced by mental illness, acts of self-destruction by those tired of life were not excused.>?

Though Bracton stated a lesser penalty for suicides undertaken out of