Well it appears that our little state has had a moment of fame, being, not exactly featured, but still very important, in this week’s episode of a tv series. It was not, as we might expect, Vermont’s quaint villages, pristine ski slopes, and bed and breakfasts that played a part in the show.
It was instead the legality in Vermont of assisted suicide that was important in the plot of an episode of the detective series Elementary. You can watch the show at http://www.cbs.com/shows/elementary/video/C6605521-F4A4-5F16-5F24-9DAF96EB2E4C/elementary-when-your-number-s-up/.
Without spoiling the ending, we will say that the fact that a person made repeated trips to VT, a state with assisted suicide, leads the show’s detectives to understand the motive for the murder and to identify the murderer. And the murder weapon is the gun a dead person bought, perhaps to commit suicide, before deciding to go to VT for a prescribed overdose instead.
Of course an heir’s wish for the inheritance is the motive. What else? A plane crash intervenes before the lethal drugs can become a murder weapon in any of the deaths on the show, but one can imagine what might have happened if they had come into the hands of the murderer. If they had, we can surmise that there would there have been another victim. The perpetrator could have been alone with the dying person at the time of death, under the terms of our law; and the perpetrator is not portrayed as the type to be a patient caregiver, by which we mean not as a good caregiver for a patient nor as a caregiver who would have been patient, certainly not when waiting for an inheritance.
One wonders if any of our legislators are ashamed and embarrassed that a tv plot revolved around the assumption that a sick man who is flying to VT would not be doing so to fulfill his bucket list of beautiful places to visit but to commit assisted suicide.
Are they? Then they should repeal this bad law, before it does lead to murder.