Final Exit Network: Search Warrants Issued in Phoenix Case

I wrote earlier today about the arrest of Final Exit Network operatives. I mentioned in that post about the Phoenix case in which a mentally ill woman—it was contended—was assisted in suicide by a group representative. I had reported that matter previously here at SHS, and now search warrants have apparently been issued in the case. From the Phoenix News Times that, unlike the MSM, covered the story previously:

This just in: Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas is about to announce the issuance of search warrants in the 2006 assisted suicide of a mentally ill Phoenix woman.

The case, which involved volunteers coming to town to help 58-year-old Jana Van Voorhis kill herself, was first reported by New Times staff writer Paul Rubin in this cover story. The volunteers were part of the nonprofit Final Exit Network, an offshoot of the now-defunct Hemlock Society—one of them was a senior citizen who’d traveled all the way from Colorado to “help” with the suicide.

The case was particularly troubling to the experts interviewed by Rubin because Van Voorhis suffered from chronic mental illness—and the volunteers apparently tried to stage the suicide as if Van Voorhis had killed herself without their assistance. It was only thanks to detective work from the Phoenix Police Department that the Final Exit Network’s involvement came to light.

Again, this isn’t compassion or the facilitation of liberty. Participating in serial assisted suicides is crass abandonment of the vulnerable to fulfill one’s own obsessions.