Nashville Court Takes Up John Jay Hooker’s Right-to-Die Lawsuit

A Nashville court heard arguments Friday morning in a high-profile case involving doctor-assisted suicide.

At issue: The line between treating pain and giving the terminally ill the means to end their own lives.

For two hours, a Davidson County Chancery Court considered a suit filed by 
John Jay Hooker. The two-time nominee for governor has Stage IV cancer and has been fighting for the right to have a doctor prescribe him medication that would kill him, practically instantly.

A measure that would have allowed such “aid-in-dying” faltered in the state legislature. But Hooker also has pursued the issue in the courts.

Attorneys for the state tried Friday to get Chancellor Carol McCoy to throw out the case, arguing Hooker’s proposal crosses the line into assisted-suicide, which is illegal in Tennessee.

Steven Hart, a litigator in the state attorney general’s office, says state law does let doctors prescribe pain medication like morphine, even if they know it’ll speed up a patient’s death. But they can’t give a patient a suicide pill.

“There’s no vagueness in the law,” he said.

But Hooker’s lawyers contended the law banning assisted-suicide is vague and should be struck down. They said the line between relieving patients’ physical pain and their mental anguish over death is thin, and if doctors can’t be sure how their prescription would be used, they shouldn’t be punished.

What’s more, Hooker’s attorneys argued that
Tennessee’s state constitution gives patients extra privacy rights, especially surrounding medical decisions. That means they — not the government — should have the final word on when they die.

After the hearing, Hooker said that principle is at stake.

“What right does the state of Tennessee have to tell me, if I’m sick and burdened, that I can’t leave?”

Hooker didn’t testify, and Chancellor Carol McCoy didn’t issue a ruling. But she says she wants to wrap the case up soon — before Hooker becomes too sick to see its outcome.