Husband proposing to assist terminally ill wife to die

Director of Public Prosecutions unable to undertake not to prosecute - criminal provisions not infringing convention rightsR (Pretty) v Director of Public Prosecutions and another; Medical Ethics Alliance and others, intervening: QBD (Lords Justice Tuckey and Hale and Mr Justice Silber): 18 October 2001The claimant, who was terminally ill and wished to die but was unable to take her own life without assistance, sought judicial review of the refusal by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) to give an undertaking not to consent under section 2(4) of the Suicide Act 1961 to the prosecution of her husband for an offence under section 2(1) if he should assist her to commit suicide.She contended, among other things, that the DPP's refusal or inability to give such an undertaking infringed her rights under articles 2, 3, 8, 9 or 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights as scheduled to the Human Rights Act 1998.Philip Havers QC and Fenella Morris (instructed by Mona Arshi, Liberty) for the claimant.

David Perry and Robin McCoubery (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) for the DPP.

Jonathan Crow (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) for the Home Secretary.

Richard Gordon QC, James Bogle and Martin Chamberlain (instructed by Coningsbys, Croydon) for the interveners.Held, dismissing the claim, that the DPP had no power under section 2(4) of the 1961 Act or otherwise to give an undertaking not to consent to the prosecution of a person under section 2(1) for an offence of aiding, abetting, counselling or procuring the suicide of another where the acts which might constitute such an offence had not yet occurred or been investigated; and that the scheme of the 1961 Act was not incompatible with the claimant's convention rights, which did not include a right to die.

(WLR)