I first met Geoffrey Fieger at a routine press conference after one of Jack Kevorkian’s early assisted suicides, when I went to cover it for the New York Times. I quickly saw that what was going on was as much about Fieger as it was Kevorkian.
Yes, the ability of medicine to keep people breathing long after they’d lost any quality of life was, and is, a major problem, and people’s right to determine when they’d had enough is an important issue that we still need to talk and think about.
Kevorkian intended to make us face this, and had the courage to do what it took to get our attention. But Geoffrey Fieger made it possible for him to do so. Had it not been for Fieger, Kevorkian would have been thrown in prison after his first suicide thirty years ago, when he helped a woman die who was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.
Fieger pointed out that Michigan then actually didn’t have a law against assisting in a suicide, and the charges were dropped. More suicides followed, and so did a series of sensational trials. What much of the public missed was the sheer many-layered brilliance of Fieger as an attorney in those trials. For strategic reasons, he succeeded in making himself appear the buffoon, while his client came across as a kindly, intellectual Dr. Marcus Welby.
As someone who had access behind the scenes, I can tell you the truth was pretty much the opposite. Kevorkian also extensively videotaped each patient, and those tapes made it clear these were often highly intelligent people whose wish to end their suffering was sadly rational.
They were also an indictment of an often too-callous medical profession, and doctors who were all too often not interested or willing to help them manage pain.
After juries refused to convict Kevorkian in five straight trials, doctor-assisted suicide, at least as practiced by Jack Kevorkian, became de facto legal in Metropolitan Detroit. At that point, however, Kevorkian fell into the self-destructive pattern he had shown all his life.
He fired Fieger, flamboyantly performed euthanasia, taunted prosecutors and decided to defend himself in court. That destroyed his movement and got him eight years in prison.
Geoffrey Fieger’s career, on the other hand, flourished. Yes, he got beaten in a landslide when he ran for governor; when it came to electoral politics, he was naïve.
But if you go back and read his speeches or his positions on the issues in that campaign, I think you’d be surprised as to how much on the money he was about our problems, most of which are as bad or worse than ever. While he is an absolutely brilliant attorney, I’m not sure he would ever be as effective in the gray and frustrating world of politics and government.
But I’m glad he is there to goad the politicians from time to time.
I’ve watched too many candidate debates in my life, but I can tell you this. I’d pay to see one between Geoffrey Fieger and Donald Trump.
