An 85-year-old retired doctor from Arizona pleaded guilty Tuesday to manslaughter for helping a woman commit suicide in an upstate New York motel room.
Stephen Miller is the victim of a 59-year-old woman (identified The New York Times Doreen Brodhead, whose real name was Jonathan Brodhead, was found dead by housekeeping staff at the Super 8 Motel in Kingston last November.
Her body was found along with a note and a canister of nitrogen gas.
Attorney Jeffrey Lichtman, a former doctor, said during a hearing in Ulster County Court that Brodhead traveled from his home in Tucson to the Hudson Valley after six months of counseling and discussions about neck and back pain he'd suffered from for decades.
The lawyer added that he had provided comfort and “very little technical assistance” to Miller after the woman contacted him because of his work with the euthanasia rights group Choice and Dignity.
According to the Ulster County District Attorney's Office, Brodhead's death by asphyxiation was determined to be “assisted suicide.”
“Technically, he broke the law,” Lichtman told reporters after the hearing, “and we accept that, but with the understanding that morally, Stephen Miller did nothing wrong.”
During a brief court hearing, Judge Brian Lowndes asked the former doctor: “Are you pleading guilty because you are in fact guilty of second-degree manslaughter?”
“By your definition, yes,” Miller replied.
Under New York state law, it is illegal to intentionally cause or assist another person in committing suicide.
Miller took the plea deal to avoid prison time, his lawyer said.
The former doctor initially pleaded not guilty to manslaughter and two charges of assault after his arrest in February.
Under an agreement with prosecutors, the assault charge was dropped.
If convicted on all charges, Miller could have faced up to 25 years in prison, but he was given five years of probation.
Miller, who practiced medicine in California, Texas and Illinois for decades, lost his medical license in Texas in 2006 after being convicted of tax evasion. He was sentenced to just under four years in prison for that case.
Miller still supports legal assisted suicide, but his lawyers say he will no longer support it.
“That part of his life is over,” Lichtman said after the hearing.
If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 988, available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, or Suicide Prevention Lifeline.org.
With post wire
