ABSTRACT
Although it has been argued that some forms of assisted dying are already regarded as lawful in the United Kingdom, technically, actively assisting in the death of another person is a crime, whether by statute, in England and Wales, or at common law in Scotland. Despite this, it is an interesting fact that when people act to breach the criminal law’s prohibition on assisted dying, they are generally treated with remarkable leniency if charged and convicted. Mason and Laurie, for example, say that:
The great majority of the few who have come to trial in these circumstances on charges of murder, manslaughter or culpable homicide have been accused of no more than using therapeutic drugs in overdose and all the relevant verdicts have indicated the reluctance of British juries to convict a medical practitioner of serious crime when the charge arises from what they see as his considered medical judgment.1
