COLDWATER - Assisted-suicide advocate Jack Kevorkian, who was dubbed Doctor Death after claiming he helped some 130 people die, was released from US prison on Friday after serving more than eight years for murder.
Kevorkian, 79, was jailed for the case of a man whose videotaped suicide was aired on national US television. But he has claimed he actively helped many more terminally-ill people end their lives.
Wearing his traditional light blue cardigan and a tie over a white shirt and slacks, the white-haired Kevorkian shuffled out of jail and smiled at a small group of reporters.
"It's wonderful," he said of his release. "It's one of the high points of life."
When asked how he felt, the former pathologist said "good."
His lawyer, who arrived in a white rented van with its back windows covered, shielded Kevorkian from questions.
"I thank everybody for coming," Meyer Morganroth said. "I thank the thousands who have supported him and have written him. He just wants a little privacy for the next few days."
Kevorkian is expected to give his first exclusive interview on Sunday to the news program 60 Minutes, whose host Mike Wallace greeted Kevorkian upon his exit from jail with a big hug. Wallace did not answer questions from reporters.
The same news show in 1998 aired an interview with Kevorkian and segments of the videotaped assisted suicide of Thomas Youk, who suffered from a debilitating motor neuron disorder, ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease.
Critics dubbed the report a "snuff film."
Though most of the people Kevorkian helped die managed to initiate their deaths with the help of his "mercy" machines, Kevorkian moved from assisted suicide to euthanasia when he filmed himself injecting a lethal dose of drugs into Youk, 52.
After eluding conviction on a number of previous charges, Kevorkian was convicted of Youk's murder on April 14, 1999.
While he has vowed to continue to lobby for the legalization of assisted suicide, Kevorkian has said he is out of the death business.
The man who sent Kevorkian to jail said he believes Kevorkian will be unwilling to break the terms of his two-year probation which prevent him from counseling people on how to commit suicide or caring for the ill or elderly.
"He's unpredictable," Oakland County prosecutor David Gorcyca told AFP Thursday night.
"But I think the environment for the last eight years has changed his attitude. I don't think he wants to go back (to jail.)"
Kevorkian forced the United States to confront the ethical issues surrounding how best to treat the pain and suffering of the terminally ill when he went public with his suicide machines in 1990 and the videos of his patients begging him to help them die.
The desperation that drove of dozens of dying people to travel to Michigan to be hooked up to his "mercy" machine -- sometimes in motels, sometimes in Kevorkian's Volkswagen van -- helped convince many of the need for a right-to-die.
Polls show that nearly half of Americans believe doctors should be able to help their patients die.
But Kevorkian's antics alienated others and many assisted-suicide advocates are hoping Kevorkian will quietly retire.
"He's the equivalent of a back-alley abortionist," said Steve Hopcraft, a Sacramento lobbyist working to pass an assisted-suicide proposal in California which goes up for a vote next week.
Kevorkian dropped bodies off at hospitals and dumped them in parks and abandoned buildings. He brandished the kidneys of a man he had helped to die during a 1998 press conference saying "first come, first served," a reference to organ donation. And he openly defied the law.
Kevorkian's campaign to legalize physician assisted suicide has had limited success. While his native Michigan rejected a proposal shortly before he went to trial, the state of Oregon passed the Death With Dignity Act in 1997.
Nearly 300 Oregon patients have since died from taking a lethal dose of medications prescribed by their physicians, state records showed.
Today's activists should be thanking Kevorkian, said Neal Nicol, a Kevorkian associate present at nearly 100 assisted suicides.
"Had Jack not been here and did what he did, they wouldn't even be talking about assisted suicide in California," Nicol said.

06/01/2007 16:31 GMT