Nicholas Goldberg: A wife shot her husband, police say. Here's why she shouldn't be charged with 1st degree murder
Yes, she killed her husband: She walked into his 11th-floor hospital room in Daytona Beach, Fla., last Saturday morning, pulled out a gun and shot him dead,According to Chief Jakari Young of the Daytona Beach Police Department, there was an agreement made between 76-year-old Gilland and her 77-year-old husband, Jerry, about three weeks earlier.
He was terminally ill and they agreed that if his condition worsened, he wanted to die. Originally the plan was that he would kill himself with the gun, but when the time came, he didn’t have the strength.Nicholas Goldberg served 11 years as editor of the editorial page and is a former editor of the Op-Ed page and Sunday Opinion section.“So she had to carry it out for him,” said Young at a news conference. “It’s a tragic circumstance because it just shows that none of us are immune from the trials and tribulations of life.”To be sure, it was a bad scene at the hospital. There was a standoff. She wouldn’t let the police into the room or drop the gun for several hours. Other patients had to be evacuated from the ward. Police no doubt feared for their lives, although the chief said that Gilland stayed in the room and that hospital staff and other patients were not threatened. But before she was arrestedBut it is exactly the kind of thing that happens in a society where suffering or dying people can’t legally end their own lives when they decide it’s time. Florida doesn’t have a death with dignity law that permits physician-assisted suicide for people with less than six months to live, as California does. In California, Jerry Gilland probably could have gotten the certification of two doctors that he had only half a year left and he could have been allowed to end his life at home with medication — without the mess, the drama or the murder charges.
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