MS sufferer in court over euthanasia law

LONDON (Reuters) - A woman with multiple sclerosis went to the Appeal Court on Tuesday in an attempt to clarify the law and protect her husband from prosecution if he helps her to commit suicide abroad.

Debbie Purdy, 45, from Bradford, failed in a legal bid last year to force the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) to give assurances her husband would not be prosecuted if he helped her go to a euthanasia facility abroad.

The law says assisting suicide is a crime that carries a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison.

But since 1992, almost 100 British citizens have ended their lives at the Dignitas facility in Switzerland -- where assisted suicide is legal -- without their relatives being prosecuted.

In December, the High Court ruled that the DPP's failure to clarify the law did not infringe her human rights.

In Tuesday's hearing, Purdy's lawyer Lord Pannick argued that the High Court judges had been wrong in law, the Press Association reported.

Pannick argued that the DPP, Keir Starmer, should be required to issue specific policy guidelines on suicide assistance prosecutions.

Such guidelines already exist for crimes of domestic violence, bad driving and football-related offences.

Lack of proper guidance infringed Purdy's Article 8 right to private and family life under the European Convention on Human Rights, he argued.

Wheelchair-bound Purdy is worried that her professional musician husband Omar would be treated harshly by the authorities because he is Cuban.

She has argued that if she did not receive assurances that he would not be prosecuted, she would have to travel abroad to commit suicide earlier than necessary.

Lawyers for the DPP have said the law does not require a specific policy and that the provisions of the 1961 Suicide Act, which make aiding and abetting suicide punishable with a jail term, provide sufficient information.

(Reporting by Tim Castle )