The West Virginian right-to-die activist who attended the suicide death of a Dublin woman recently has flatly rejected claims that he "assisted" the suicide. Patrick Smyth, reports from Beckley, West Virginia.
Unitarian minister the Rev George Exoo, speaking to his congregation and journalists here yesterday, said that his role had been to provide "spiritual direction" to a woman, Ms Rosemary Toole Gilhooly, who had already decided she was going to die and was not going to be dissuaded from that view.
His inistence that counselling is not equivalent to assisting in the suicide is unlikely to deflect gardaí who are travelling to the coal-mining town to sit in on interviews with Mr Exoo, who runs a chaplaincy from his home to minister to those facing death.
He says if summonsed to talk to the police he "will go with a free and open conscience", adding that he deplores the lack of compassion of Irish law that would not "recognise her pain and honour her wish."
Although cautioned by a friendly lawyer, he has already given extensive interviews to the Charleston Gazette, and now The Irish Times and the Associated Press, in which he details the last few minutes of Ms Toole Gilhooly's life.
He insists he did not directly administer either the lethal medication or the gas but may have legal problems with his admission that he suggested to the drowsy woman that the time had come to extinquish her cigarette and put the gas-filled bag over her face.
He says he was concerned that the medication was taking effect and that she might pass out before she inhaled the gas.
If Mr Exoo and and his companion, Mr Thomas McGurrin, are charged with the Irish offence of "assisting a suicide", the authorities may apply for an extradition warrant. Mr Exoo denies a number of media reports about his trip: he says he was paid a total of only $2,500 to defray the costs of travel, car hire, and hotel bills for him and Mr McGurrin.
The money also paid for the two-day trip to Mayo they had taken with Ms Toole Gilhooly to look for relations of Mr McGurrin.
He insists that Ms Toole Gilhooly was suffering not from depression - "she never used the word" - but from a debilitating and uncurable brain condition which had been attested to by a doctor he trusts.
He claims that he was put in touch with her through a responsible and credible contact in the right-to-die movement.