Uhh, no, you can't do that

Whatever you may think about the morality of assisted suicide in cases of terminal illness, this is not allowed and cannot be allowed. Ray Gosling says his friend was dying of AIDS -- this was before they had effective treatments -- so he asked the doctor to leave the room and smothered the guy with a pillow. Let us assume the smotheree requested smothering -- which Gosling actually does not make clear, but let's stipulate it. Anybody could go into a hospital room, kill the inhabitant, and then just claim they had asked for it.

Not a defense. Gosling says on television that he committed murder.

Oddly, Richard B. Cheney says on national TV that he is a war criminal and there are no repercussions.

We've all had difficult colleagues but Amy Bishop is an outlier. But we all know what's really weird about her story. How many poor Black or Hispanic kids could blow away a family member with a shotgun, then run out of the house and attempt serial carjacking at gunpoint, and have the police and the DA just drop the whole thing as an unfortunate accident without even investigating?

Just think about it when you contemplate the composition of the prison population.