Judge Orders Murder Trial for Kevorkian in Videotaped Death

WATERFORD, Mich. —  Retired pathologist Jack Kevorkian was ordered Wednesday to stand trial on murder charges based largely on a video he supplied to “60 Minutes” that appears to show him giving a terminally ill man a lethal injection.

“The intent to kill was premeditated,” District Judge Phyllis McMillen ruled after a preliminary hearing on the charges. She also ordered Kevorkian to stand trial on charges of assisted suicide and delivering a controlled substance.

No trial date was set.

It will be the first time Kevorkian actually stands trial on murder charges. He has twice been charged with murder, but those charges were thrown out. He has been acquitted in three assisted-suicide trials involving five deaths.

Kevorkian, 70, had dared prosecutors to charge him after he produced the video of Thomas Youk, a 52-year-old man who suffered from Lou Gehrig’s disease.

The first-degree murder charge carries a mandatory life sentence. The assisted-suicide charge is punishable by up to five years, the controlled-substance charge by up to seven.

Kevorkian has acknowledged taking part in about 130 assisted suicides since 1990 but said Youk’s death was his first euthanasia, in which he directly administered the lethal agent. In previous cases, he said, he had an apparatus that let the patient start the flow of drugs or gas.

He told reporters after Wednesday’s ruling that what he did in Youk’s case was not a crime “no matter what the words say on paper.”

At the hearing, the judge was shown the complete videotape and the edited form that was seen by more than 15 million households watching CBS’ “60 Minutes.”

“I think the main evidence is the one he provided to the whole country,” prosecutor John Skrzynski said.

Kevorkian is believed to have injected Youk with a fatal dose of potassium chloride at Youk’s Waterford Township home on Sept. 17, three weeks after Michigan’s latest assisted-suicide law took effect.

Kevorkian remains free on a $750,000 personal bond.