University of New England

Controversial right-to-die issue topic of June 15th lecture by Bill Colby, attorney for the Nancy Cruzan case

Approaching the one-year anniversary of the Terry Schaivo case, Americans are still hotly debating the highly emotional topic of who can legally determine a person’s right to die.

Bill Colby, the attorney for the Nancy Cruzan case – the first right-to-die case in America that received full-blown media attention – will speak on this issue at 6 p.m. on Thursday, June 15, 2006 in Room 304, Harold Alfond Center for Health Sciences at the University of New England in Biddeford. A reception and book signing will immediately follow the lecture.

The lecture titled “Unplugged: Reclaiming the Right to Die in America” is free and open to the public. It is sponsored and hosted by the University’s Division on Aging, part of the College of Osteopathic Medicine, and co-sponsored by the American Cancer Society and Maine Medical Center.

Background
In 1983, 25-year-old Nancy Cruzan careened off the road, flipped over and was thrown from her car into a ditch. Nancy hadn’t breathed for at least 15 minutes before paramedics found and revived her—a triumph of modern medicine launching her family’s seven-year crusade to free Nancy from a persistent vegetative state.

After her accident, they worked tirelessly to help bring her back to consciousness, without success. After five years, the family finally accepted that Nancy's condition would never improve. Already worn out from losing the fight to bring Nancy back to life, the Cruzans began a painful, and very public, legal battle to have the state hospital remove her feeding tube and let her die.

Bill Colby was the Cruzan family’s lawyer, who guided them through a protracted legal journey leading, ultimately, to the U.S. Supreme Court. In the process, Colby witnessed the emotional toll the entire experience exacted upon the Cruzan family.

After several suits between the Cruzan family and the state's attorney general in the Missouri court system, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear its first right-to-die case, that of Nancy Cruzan. In a 5-4 decision, the Cruzans lost. Buried in hundreds of pages of the Supreme Court’s opinion, however, Colby found the key that would allow them to retry the case back in Missouri—and win.

(Press release issued May 30, 2006)