A great-grandmother who made headlines by selling suicide kits from her California home was placed on five years of supervised probation on Monday and ordered to pay a US$1 000 fine for a tax-related offence stemming from her mail-order business. Sharlotte Hydorn, a retired science teacher, pleaded guilty in December to a federal charge of failing to file income tax returns from 2007 through 2010, a period during which investigators said at least seven customers used her kits to kill themselves.
Prosecutors said Hydorn sold about 1 300 of the do-it-yourself asphyxiation hoods during those years but agreed to stop making or selling them as part of a plea deal. Hydorn gained notoriety after one of her mail-order customers in Oregon, Nicholas Klonoski (29) described by his family as suffering from depression but otherwise healthy, used one of her so-called exit kits to kill himself in December 2010.
Outrage over that case led Oregon state lawmakers to pass legislation to ban sales of such devices, even though Oregon is one of two US states with laws legalising physician-assisted suicide for people with incurable, fatal illnesses.
Hydorn said little in court on Monday, nodding her head in agreement when the judge asked if her correct age was 93. She also expressed concern about being allowed to travel to Mexico for visits with an adopted son who lives there. But the federal judge who sentenced Hydorn in San Diego rendered a finding that her suicide kit business was illegal under California law.
Hydorn was prosecuted under the US tax code because “the sale of suicide kits is not a violation of federal law,” assistant US Attorney Peter Mazza said after the sentencing.
“This case was never about the position that someone has the right to end their own life. This was about her indiscriminate sale of kits to anyone who wrote her a check.” — Reuters.