A former doctor pled guilty Tuesday to manslaughter for his part in helping a woman commit suicide.
Stephen Miller, 85, traveled from Arizona to New York last year to help Doreen Brodhead, 59, commit suicide in a Super 8 Motel. According to the Times Union, Miller picked up Brodhead at her apartment and they then purchased a nitrogen gas tank. They drove to the motel, where Miller helped Brodhead use the tank to kill herself.
Though Miller had previously been licensed as a physician, at the time he aided in the suicide he was working with Choice and Dignity, a pro-assisted suicide group. A family member of Brodhead reportedly said she had been suffering from severe neck and back pain and had lived alone — an indication that she may have been suffering from loneliness, which is a common reason many people seek out assisted death.
Miller’s lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman, told the court that though Miller was admitting to breaking the law, he was not sorry for his role in Brodhead’s death, going so far as to claim that helping kill the woman was not “morally wrong.”
“Technically, he violated the law,” Lichtman told reporters. “We accept that, but with the understanding that morally, Stephen Miller did nothing wrong.”
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Though Miller’s attorney tried to frame his actions as an act of compassion, Ulster County District Attorney Emmanuel Nneji defended state law, which prohibits anyone from aiding or abetting in assisted suicide.
“The New York state Legislature has not passed a law authorizing assisted suicide, and as DA, I cannot close my eyes to that fact regardless of any mitigating considerations, lest we open a pandora’s box for subterfuge and ill motives to excuse homicides as assisted suicides,” Nneji said in a statement. “It is best to direct or assist the person to the resources available through medical, psychiatric and family interventions.”
Under the terms of a plea deal, Miller was sentenced to five years’ probation, which he will serve at home.
