John Lescroart - The Mercy Rule

Great rivers may begin with a tiny trickle, but the creation of an avalanche does not occur in the same way, where one snowflake adheres to another and the growing mass slowly coalesces until it simply begins to fall over itself. No, an avalanche just happens - all at once the side of a mountain gives way, coming loose with explosive force, unstoppable and indiscriminate, rearranging the landscape of everything in the path of its inanimate will.

By two A.M. on Thursday morning, less than eight hours after Graham Russo’s release from jail, the momentum of the avalanche had pushed every other issue in San Francisco off the political map. By that hour the early-morning edition of the San Francisco Chronicle was coming off the press with the banner headline: ‘Mercy Killing Debate Rips City, State Offices.’ The long story merely scratched at the surface of the many fronts on which the battle had erupted simultaneously.

The mayor supported the district attorney. San Francisco had always been in the forefront of social awareness. Sharron Pratt had done the right thing. People shouldn’t be forced to live in unrelenting pain. Where was the quality in a life like that? If a person chose to take his or her own life to end their suffering, they had the right to do so, and the people who helped them were not murderers. They were heroes.

Dan Rigby, the city’s chief of police, was outraged. This was the latest and most serious example of the DA’s utter disdain for the police who kept the city safe. His officers had acted correctly in arresting a homicide suspect. There was no evidence that the death of Sal Russo had been anything but a murder in the course of a robbery.

But even if it had been an assisted suicide, ‘The DA is elected to enforce the laws, not make them. I shudder to wonder what other kinds of homicides Ms Pratt is going to decide are not crimes.’

Dean Powell, the state attorney general, was studying the case, refusing to disclose, or foreclose, any of his options. Art Drysdale, formerly of the DA’s office (and fired by Pratt) and now with the state attorney general, would only comment that ‘as a matter of law it’s unambiguous that we have jurisdictional responsibility. We’re not going to let murders go unpunished in San Francisco.’

The Board of Supervisors called an emergency session for late in the evening, and declared by a 9 to 2 majority that San Francisco should be a ‘right-to-die’ haven – the country needed a humanitarian city that would become a mecca for the terminally ill and hopelessly suffering.

The Catholics and the Protestants wasted no time squaring off. Archbishop James Flaherty reiterated the stand of the Catholic Church on any form of euthanasia. God took His children when it was His time. Jesus himself had suffered horribly, Flaherty said, and that he had allowed himself to do so was meant clearly to serve as an example to all of humanity: suffering was part of life. It had a purpose. It ennobled and strengthened the spirit, especially when offered up to the glory of God.

The archbishop ended his remarks with a not-so-subtle dig at the mayor’s stand on ‘quality of life.’ ‘Life is a sacred thing unto itself,’ he said. ‘A quality life is a life lived in the service of God, not in the pursuit of comfort.’

At first light, from the altar of Grace Cathedral on Nob Hill, with the huge AIDS mosaic on the floor, and AIDS blankets hung from the rafters, the Right Reverend Cecil Dunsmuir fired his own broadside back at Flaherty to his own bank of cameras.

‘Anyone who could extol the virtue of suffering ought to spend more time with our AIDS community. Here he will find great caring, great love, great sacrifice, and great nobility in the face of death. But the end of pain is a blessing from God, and administering to that end is the true meaning of Christianity.’

Police had to be called to a meeting of a previously planned anti-abortion protest group at an Elks Hall in Potrero Heights when differences on the morality of mercy killing erupted into a melee among the activists.

Barbara Brandt was an attractive woman in her late thirties who made her living as a Sacramento lobbyist. As the state’s chairperson of the Hemlock Society, the national right-to-die organization, Brandt saw Graham Russo’s picture on the front page of The Sacramento Bee - young and movie-star handsome – and, after reading the story, realized that here was this year’s poster boy for major fund-raising.

She looked up Graham’s number in the telephone book and was a bit surprised when he picked up on the second ring.

‘I’m really not interested in talking about it,’ he told her after a couple of minutes. ‘I’m a lawyer, you know. If I break the law, they’ll yank my bar card. I’ve already had enough problems with my career.’

‘But you did the right thing,’ Brandt persisted.

‘You don’t know what I did.’

‘Yes, I do,’ she said. ‘I know just what you did. I’m on your side.’

But it wasn’t any use. He wasn’t budging. After he hung up, she considered it for several minutes. She’d heard enough to know the truth. Graham’s law career would be over before it had begun if he admitted he’d helped kill his dad.

But he’d done the right thing; he’d already committed his civil disobedience. All he needed now, Brandt thought, was the courage to admit what he’d done. And she thought she could help him find a way to do just that.

The public television station made a controversial decision to change their early Thursday-morning programming. Entitled Just Let Me Die , the show later won television’s Humanitas Award and an Emmy for Best Local Documentary. It was a grueling and poignant half hour of hastily assembled and edited file videotape of suffering hospital and nursing-home patients – AI sufferers, cancer victims, other terminally patients of both sexes, all ages, creeds, and colors – and all conscious enough to voice their desire to die.

‘This is Hank Travers with Bay Area Action News. I’m standing outside the offices of the California state attorney general’s office in San Francisco, and with me is Assistant Attorney General Gil Soma. Mr Soma, can you tell us whether the state has decided to bring charges against Mr Russo?’

Soma was a talking head. ‘We need to carefully review all the evidence, of course. But the law, and my office, believes that the deliberate killing of another human being is usually a crime.’

There was an avid glint in his eyes that belied the apparent objectivity. Clearly, Soma wanted the head of Graham Russo.

And just as obviously, Hank Travers recognized this. ‘Is it true that you and Mr Russo used to work together?’

The camera angle widened. Soma was the picture of the fighting young attorney. The cameras were out on the street and a freshening breeze was playing with his tie, messing with his hair. He ignored these distractions, giving all his attention to Hank. ‘It’s a matter of record that we were both clerks for Federal Judge Harold Draper. Beyond that I can’t comment.’

The camera moved in for a close-up. Hank’s voice came over Gil Soma’s intense glare. ‘But you know a different Graham Russo, don’t you? The man behind the outward appearance? And you believe he would have killed his father for fifty thousand dollars?’

‘No comment.’

Travers tried a last time. ‘But in your opinion he’s the kind of person who could have done it?’

Soma kept it straight. ‘We’re looking at the evidence. That’s all I can tell you.’ But he continued nodding into the camera, and the message came across loud and clear: Soma despised Graham Russo. He was going to take him down if he could.