Freed campaigner: I'll fight on for right to die

Lesley Martin after her release, with son Sean, 10, stepdaughter, Sophie, 9, and Philip Nitschke. Picture / Mark Mitchell

Voluntary euthanasia campaigner Lesley Martin has emerged from jail pledging to continue her fight for a law change giving terminally ill people the right to die.

Martin will resume research on international euthanasia laws in the New Year, after a quiet family Christmas at home in New Plymouth.

She was released from Arohata Women's Prison near Wellington yesterday morning after serving half of a 15-month jail term for attempting to murder her ill mother, Joy Martin, five years ago.

Martin was met at the jail by her close family, including her 10-year-old son Sean, nine-year-old stepdaughter Sophie and husband Warren Fulljames.

"It's just wonderful," she said.

"If you can smile with your whole being, then I know what that feels like now."

After speaking to reporters, she went to a Wellington brunch with voluntary euthanasia supporters, her lawyers and the man dubbed in Australia "Dr Death", Philip Nitschke.

Martin will not be attending two New Zealand workshops this week at which Dr Nitschke will begin a selection process to pick people who might go to Australia to learn how to make a lethal barbiturate-based potion, which kills in about an hour.

Martin will talk to Dr Nitschke between buying a Christmas tree today, and planning a son's belated 21st birthday party.

But she said her focus was on improving palliative care for the seriously and terminally ill, and on developing a legal option if continuing care was not wanted or had failed.

She said the narrow defeat in Parliament last year of the Death with Dignity Bill, which MPs rejected by 60 votes to 57, indicated that a carefully drafted law change had a strong chance of getting enough support to pass.

She and the pro-euthanasia lobby group Exit New Zealand would be researching international laws to see what had worked, and what had not.

"Nobody wants to see mistakes in a piece of legislation like this," she said.

"Everybody, and certainly all Exit members, recognise it is a very sensitive issue and always will be.

"It will always create that divide, it has to be handled very carefully.

"What we want is the best possible environment for end of life decisions."

Martin was jailed in April after describing in her book To Die Like A Dog injecting her terminally ill mother with a potentially deadly dose of morphine.

She has appealed against her conviction and sentence, but the Court of Appeal has yet to give its decision.

The Parole Board twice refused home detention for Martin after she would not admit guilt, and yesterday she said she had also rejected her son Sean's request to say what the authorities wanted to hear so she could go home.

She said being in prison had been hard, but nothing terrible had happened to her and her family had come through the ordeal intact.

Dr Nitschke said Lesley Martin's case showed that the law remained uncompromising, and sent to jail people who made caring, compassionate decisions.

He will run workshops in Auckland tomorrow and Wellington on Friday where those who wanted to could find out about an Australian meeting next year to make his "peaceful pill".

Dr Nitschke said the "pill" - actually a potion which is drunk - renders a person unconscious in a minute or two, and kills in about an hour.

He hopes to have about 30 elderly people jointly make the potion so they can avoid laws barring the aiding of a suicide.

He said five New Zealanders had so far contacted him about taking part in the Australian workshop.

A police spokesman told the Herald last night that Dr Nitschke would not be breaking any New Zealand law by talking about the potion and running the workshops.

But he could be investigated if he gave a person the means to commit suicide. 

THE CASE

Lesley Martin was jailed for 15 months in April by the High Court at Wanganui for attempted murder by injecting her mother, Joy Martin, 69, with 60mg of morphine in May 1999.

She served half her sentence.