PRO-LIFE NEWS IN BRIEF.

Euthanasia Supporter Convicted of Attempted Murder

A New Zealand jury found euthanasia activist Lesley Martin guilty of attempted murder for injecting her mother with an overdose of morphine in May 1999. The March 31 verdict could carry a prison term of 10 years.

Joy Martin, 69, suffered from cancer and died after receiving 60 mg of morphine. Her doctor had prescribed only 10 mg of morphine to be given over a 24-hour period for pain relief, according to the New Zealand Herald.

Although police questioned Lesley Martin about her mother's death in 1999, charges were filed only after Martin published an account of her actions in a book titled To Die Like a Dog. Martin wrote that her mother told her she didn't want to live anymore, The Independent reported.

Martin also told police she "cuddled" her mother with a pillow until she stopped breathing, according to the Dominion Post.

Prosecutors charged Martin with two counts of attempted murder for the morphine injection and apparent suffocation. However, evidence from an autopsy showed that Joy Martin died of respiratory arrest from morphine poisoning and not suffocation. Lesley Martin was acquitted of the second charge.

Prosecutor Andrew Cameron said in his summation that Martin meant to kill her mother, not merely to relieve her pain. Euthanasia, he reminded the jury, is against the law in New Zealand, the Post reported. The evidence "made it very clear that a substantial dose of morphine had to be given shortly prior to death to account for the potentially fatal dose of morphine levels in the blood," Cameron told the court, according to the Post. "When she put that pillow over her mother's face having also given the further dose of morphine, she intended to kill her."