US man guilty of attempting to assist Canadian’s suicide to be sentenced
Posted October 15, 2014 6:48 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
FARIBAULT, Minn. (NEWS1130) – A former Minnesota nurse who has admitted to going online and encouraging people to kill themselves is scheduled to be sentenced today in a case involving the suicides of an English man and a Canadian woman.
William Melchert-Dinkel is being sentenced on one count of assisting suicide and one count of attempting to assist a suicide.
The 52-year-old was convicted on those counts in September — after the Supreme Court changed the state’s assisted suicide law and reversed his prior convictions in the deaths of Mark Drybrough, 32, of Coventry, England and Nadia Kajouji, 18, of Brampton, Ont.
Melchert-Dinkel’s attorney plans to appeal the latest convictions. Among other things, Terry Watkins says he would’ve used a different defence if the case was originally filed under the law as it now stands. Under current law, it’s illegal to assist a suicide, but not illegal to encourage suicide.
Kajouji jumped into a frozen river in 2008. She was a student at Carleton University in Ottawa at the time. Drybrough hanged himself in 2005.
