Martin trial told patients often asked for death

By JAMES GARDINER

A specialist in care for the dying has told the High Court at Wanganui that patients often ask him to kill them.

Defence witness Professor Roderick MacLeod, associate dean of Otago University's Dunedin Medical School, was giving evidence in the attempted murder trial of euthanasia advocate Lesley Jane Martin yesterday.

Cross-examined by Crown prosecutor Andrew Cameron, Professor McLeod said there were striking similarities between a conversation Martin, 40, describes in her book To Die Like A Dog and conversations he regularly had with terminally ill patients.

The book says Martin made a secret promise to her mother, Joy Patricia Martin, 69, not to let her suffer.

It quotes cancer victim Joy Martin saying: "Don't let me lie there, not alive and not dead ... Please help me ... Be quick ... and don't get caught."

Later Martin, a registered nurse, quotes her mother saying she is scared and herself replying: "I'll know when it's time ... I won't leave you like that ... I promise."

She was arrested and charged two years ago, after telling police the book was true.

The Crown alleges she twice attempted to keep her promise, by administering high doses of morphine in the last days of her mother's life, then by holding a pillow over her face just before her death early on May 28, 1999.

Professor MacLeod said it was normal for dying people who were "scared and frightened" not to want to continue living the way they were living nor die in an undignified way. "And when they ask me to kill them, which they do, I talk about that with them and basically the vast majority of them are saying they don't want to live like this, which is entirely different from saying they want to be dead."

Mr Cameron suggested that in Martin's case there was "a determined course of conduct from that promise to end her mother's life".

Professor MacLeod: "That's certainly what happens in the book."

Despite an objection from defence lawyer Dr Donald Stevens, QC, Mr Cameron asked Professor MacLeod what the book showed about Martin's intent.

He also put it to him that there was nothing Joy Martin's GP, Dr Bevan Chilcott, or the hospice nurse who attended to her, Wiki Alward, could have done to have "arrested that intent".

Professor MacLeod, who criticised health workers' "inadequate" care of Joy Martin, disagreed.

"Had they heard and understood her anguish, there may well have been something they could have done.

"The perception that there is nothing more I could have done is one that I find unacceptable."

He said only Lesley Martin knew how she wanted her book to be interpreted.

Whether the jury will hear from Martin will be known on Monday.

When the trial adjourned yesterday, Justice John Wild said there might be a further defence witness and that the Crown might also call a further witness to provide rebuttal evidence.

He indicated he was likely to sum up on Tuesday, after which the jury will consider its verdicts.