Civil Remedies and Assisted Suicide This essay delves into the need for civil remedies to protect oneself from actions of assisted suicide by family, guardians, etc. Some states have already enacted such legislation, while others are doing so. in the process. This is a simple and safe legal procedure to protect yourself from the threat of assisted suicide/euthanasia. On May 2, 1994, a Michigan jury acquitted Jack Kevorkian of charges related to his publicly proclaimed assistance in the suicide of Thomas Hyde. The ruling highlights how the pathos of individual cases often leads criminal juries to react emotionally, not paying attention to the overall effects that signaling social acceptance of death as a solution to human problems has on the elderly and people with disabilities. . This is a weakness of our society at the present time. This is one of several reasons why more states should follow the lead of Minnesota, Tennessee, and North Dakota, all of which have recently enacted “civil remedy” statutes that, quite apart from criminal remedies, allow private individuals to obtain injunctions against those who assist suicides. Injunctions are granted by judges, without juries, and a judge can punish violators with fines for contempt of court. Unfortunately, Kevorkian's acquittal is not an isolated case of a jury overturning laws protecting suicide victims. Recent history demonstrates that no doctors, and few non-doctors, have been successfully prosecuted for assisting suicide. The emotional strain of individual cases makes prosecutors reluctant to seek punishment and juries reluctant to impose it. An article in the November 5, 1992 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine co-authored by Dr. Timothy Quill (who himself escaped punishment when a grand jury declined to indict him for his openly announced participation in assisting a suicide[1] ) notes, “In every situation in which a doctor has compassionately helped a terminally ill patient commit suicide, criminal charges have been dismissed or a not guilty verdict has been rendered.”[2] Other studies support this conclusion, which is actually not limited to circumstances of "terminal illness" or "compassion".[3]Although there have been some successful prosecutions of non-doctors, these have been extremely rare. A 1986 article in the Columbia Law Review concluded: [All indications are that assistance statutes are rarely, if ever, used. ... [D]espite the thousands of suicides each year, only about fifty news reports have been identified regarding some form of prosecution in the last ten years for some type of suicide assistance.