Hickman & Rose partner Kate Goold has been interviewed by ITV News about the criminal law relating to assisting another person’s suicide.
Journalist Paul Brand spoke to Kate about the news that an individual had been arrested in the UK on suspicion of ‘encouraging or assisting the suicide of a British person in Switzerland’.
Kate, who joined Hickman & Rose’s Serious and General Crime team earlier this month, explained the law in this area, telling ITV that criminal prosecutions are “extremely rare”.
While ITV News only broadcast an excerpt of Kate’s interview, her fuller explanation of the law relating to assisted suicide is below:
“While helping someone to die is legal in Switzerland and some other countries, the same is not true in the UK.
Here, anyone who deliberately helps another person to kill themselves can be investigated by the police, and potentially charged with the criminal offence of assisting or encouraging suicide.
It does not matter where in the world the death took place. If the action of assisting or encouraging a suicide took place in the UK, they may be vulnerable to a police investigation.
It has been my experience that in the overwhelming majority of these cases, the encouragement or assistance is from family members who act only out of compassion to ease a loved one’s suffering.
For these people – and for the person who wants to end their life – the prospect of a post-death police investigation may be highly distressing.
In 2009 the then Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Keir Starmer, produced a set of guidelines clarifying the CPS’s thinking on when it will prosecute in these cases. The resulting policy document provides a list of the factors which make a criminal prosecution more or less likely.
Among the factors which make prosecution more likely is if the suspect was not ‘wholly motivated by compassion’. Here the policy document gives the example of someone who ‘stood to gain in some way’ from the death.
Another factor making prosecution more likely, according to the document, is if the suspect ‘gave encouragement to more than one victim who were not know to each other’.
The factors mitigating against criminal prosecution include if ‘the victim had reached a voluntary, clear, settled and informed decision to commit suicide’; and if ‘the suspect reported the victim’s suicide to the police and fully assisted them in their enquiries.’
The policy document is clear that the list of factors is not exhaustive, and that each case will be considered on its own facts and merits.
It is worth noting that criminal prosecutions in this area are extremely rare. In the fifteen years from 2009 to 2024 a total 187 cases were referred to the CPS. Of these, 60 were proceeded with – leading to just four convictions.
Having said this, for many people, being investigated on the suspicion of having committed this offence at the time of a bereavement is a deeply upsetting experience at one of the most difficult times in their lives”.
The full ITV report can be viewed here.
