Murder charges against Kevorkian

MICHIGAN'S Court of Appeals has turned the clock back more than three years on efforts to stop Jack Kevorkian.

In separate rulings Tuesday, the court declared the state's ban on assisted suicide unconstitutional on technical grounds and reinstated murder charges against Dr. Kevorkian in the 1991 deaths of two women.

Those charges - like another murder charge dropped in 1990 - had been dismissed by a judge who ruled Michigan had no law against helping someone commit suicide. That was why lawmakers passed the ban a year ago.

Left again with only murder charges to stop Kevorkian, Oakland County Prosecutor Richard Thompson said that prosecuting the doctor could be difficult and that he would be more comfortable with a law against assisted suicide.