The Suicide Act 1961 (9 & 10 Eliz 2 c 60) is an
Act of the
Parliament of the United Kingdom
The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative suprema ...
. It decriminalised the act of suicide in England and Wales so that those who failed in the attempt to kill themselves would no longer be prosecuted.
The text of sections 1 and 2 of this Act was enacted verbatim for
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland ( ga, Tuaisceart Éireann ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, that is variously described as a country, province or region. Nort ...
by sections 12 and 13 of the
Criminal Justice Act (Northern Ireland) 1966
The Criminal Justice Act (Northern Ireland) 1966 (c 20) (NI) is an Act of the Parliament of Northern Ireland. It makes similar provision to the Homicide Act 1957 and the Suicide Act 1961 for Northern Ireland.
Part I – Provisions as to crimi ...
. The Act did not apply to Scotland, as suicide was never an offence under
Scots Law
Scots law () is the legal system of Scotland. It is a hybrid or mixed legal system containing civil law and common law elements, that traces its roots to a number of different historical sources. Together with English law and Northern Ireland l ...
. Assisting a suicide in Scotland can in some circumstances constitute
murder
Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification (jurisprudence), justification or valid excuse (legal), excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought. ("The killing of another person wit ...
or
culpable homicide
Culpable homicide is a categorisation of certain offences in various jurisdictions within the Commonwealth of Nations which involves the illegal killing of a person either with or without an intention to kill depending upon how a particular j ...
, but no modern examples of cases devoid of ''direct'' application of intentional or unintentional harm (such as helping a person to inject themselves) seem to be available; it was noted in a consultation preceding the introduction of the
Assisted Suicide (Scotland) Bill that "the law appears to be subject to some uncertainty, partly because of a lack of relevant case law".
Analysis
Suicide is defined as the act of intentionally ending one's own life. Before the Suicide Act 1961, it was a crime to commit suicide, and anyone who attempted and failed could be prosecuted and imprisoned, while the families of those who succeeded could also potentially be prosecuted. In part, that criminalization reflected religious and moral objections to suicide as self-murder.
Augustine
Augustine of Hippo ( , ; la, Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis; 13 November 354 – 28 August 430), also known as Saint Augustine, was a theologian and philosopher of Berbers, Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia (Roman pr ...
and
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas, OP (; it, Tommaso d'Aquino, lit=Thomas of Aquino; 1225 – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican friar and priest who was an influential philosopher, theologian and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism; he is known wi ...
had formulated the view that whoever deliberately took away the life given to them by their Creator showed the utmost disregard for the will and authority of God and jeopardized their salvation, encouraging the Church to treat suicide as a
sin
In a religious context, sin is a transgression against divine law. Each culture has its own interpretation of what it means to commit a sin. While sins are generally considered actions, any thought, word, or act considered immoral, selfish, s ...
. By the early 1960s, however, the
Church of England
The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britain ...
was re-evaluating its stance on the legality of suicide, and decided that counselling, psychotherapy and
suicide prevention
Suicide prevention is a collection of efforts to reduce the risk of suicide. Suicide is often preventable, and the efforts to prevent it may occur at the individual, relationship, community, and society level. Suicide is a serious public health ...
intervention before the event took place would be a better solution than criminalisation of what amounted to an act of despair in this context.
Sir
Charles Fletcher-Cooke
Sir Charles Fletcher Fletcher-Cooke, QC (5 May 1914 – 24 February 2001) was a British politician.
Early life
Fletcher-Cooke was born into a professional London family, though one that was financially diminished because of his father's death ...
was the principal figure behind the emergence, introduction and passage of this legislation. Before it was introduced in July 1961, Fletcher-Cooke had been unsuccessfully trying to introduce such a bill for the decriminalisation of suicide for over a decade beforehand. While Home Secretary
Rab Butler
Richard Austen Butler, Baron Butler of Saffron Walden, (9 December 1902 – 8 March 1982), also known as R. A. Butler and familiarly known from his initials as Rab, was a prominent British Conservative Party politician. ''The Times'' obituary c ...
supported the bill, Prime Minister
Harold Macmillan
Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, (10 February 1894 – 29 December 1986) was a British Conservative statesman and politician who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1957 to 1963. Caricatured as "Supermac", he ...
did not. In the event, the bill passed into law easily, decriminalising suicide, but creating an offence of "assisting, aiding or abetting suicide", which later became a pivotal clause for future debates about
voluntary euthanasia
Voluntary euthanasia (VE) is the ending of a person's life at their request in order to relieve them of suffering. Voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (PAS) have been the focus of intense debate in recent years.
Some forms of ...
several decades later.
["Personal File: Charles Fletcher-Cooke:" ''Who Do You Think You Are?'' March 2013: 66]
The Suicide Act was, however, a significant piece of legislation for, while section 1 treated the previous legal rule that suicide is a crime as "abrogated", section 2(1) stated:
This created a new offence of "complicity in suicide", but the effect is unparalleled in this branch of the law because there is no other instance in which an
accessory can incur liability when the principal does not commit a criminal offence. The situation with a
conspiracy
A conspiracy, also known as a plot, is a secret plan or agreement between persons (called conspirers or conspirators) for an unlawful or harmful purpose, such as murder or treason, especially with political motivation, while keeping their agree ...
to assist a suicide is likewise unique: if an individual incapable of committing suicide for him or herself enlists the aid of an outside party in performing the act, that party may be charged with conspiracy. The wording of s1(1) Criminal Law Act 1977 provides that a conspiracy will come into being if, when everything has been done to realize the agreement, some conduct:
No offence will necessarily be committed by the suicide victim if the agreement is carried out, but the fact that it is legally impossible to commit the crime of suicide is irrelevant under the Criminal Attempts Act 1982
Human Rights Act 1998
The first
human rights
Human rights are Morality, moral principles or Social norm, normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for ce ...
challenge to s2(1) was mounted in 2001 under the
European Convention on Human Rights
The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR; formally the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms) is an international convention to protect human rights and political freedoms in Europe. Drafted in 1950 by t ...
(ECHR) in ''Pretty v Director of Public Prosecutions'' (2002) 1 AC 800 with the ECHR rejecting the application in ''
Pretty v. UK'' (2346/02) shortly before her death by natural cause
Diane Pretty
Diane Pretty (15 November 1958 – 11 May 2002) was a British woman from Luton who was the focus of a debate about the laws of euthanasia in the United Kingdom during the early part of the 21st century. She had attempted to change British law so sh ...
was suffering from
motor neurone disease
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as motor neuron disease (MND) or Lou Gehrig's disease, is a neurodegenerative disease that results in the progressive loss of motor neurons that control voluntary muscles. ALS is the most comm ...
and was paralysed from the neck down, had little decipherable speech and was fed by a tube. She had only a few weeks to live, claimed to be frightened and distressed by the suffering and indignity, and wanted her husband to provide her with assistance in ending her life when she felt unable to bear it any longer, although she intended to perform the final act herself. Because giving this assistance would expose the husband to liability under s2(1), the DPP was asked to agree not to prosecute. When this agreement was refused, the case began. Article 2 of the Convention provides:
:1. Everyone's right to life shall be protected by law. No-one shall be deprived of his life intentionally save in the execution of a sentence of a court following his conviction of a crime for which this penalty is provided by law.
This direct challenge to the legislation sought to assert an individual's right of autonomy against
public policies
Public policy is an institutionalized proposal or a decided set of elements like laws, regulations, guidelines, and actions to solve or address relevant and real-world problems, guided by a conception and often implemented by programs. Public p ...
protecting the sanctity of human life. Mrs. Pretty's full capacity for informed, rational consent was not disputed by opposing counsel. In ''Re B (Adult: Refusal of Medical Treatment)'' (2002) 2 AER 449 the court had already decided that a patient could refuse treatment knowing that this would result in death. However, the court in this case drew a distinction between passively allowing death through
omission and active assistance in suicide, as pe
R v Brown (1993) 2 All ER 75(the famous
Spanner case), which ruled that a person cannot lawfully consent to anything more than the infliction of minor injury. Thus, the standing adjudication in English common law is that, as dying is an inevitable consequence of life, the right to life under the Convention necessarily implies the obligation to have nature take its course.
References
*
External links
*
The Suicide Act 1961 as amended from the
National Archives.
{{English criminal law navbox
English criminal law
United Kingdom Acts of Parliament 1961
Suicide in the United Kingdom
Mental health law in the United Kingdom