Confined To West Virginia

The Exit Counselor has been spared. Praise the Lord. Prepare to die.

George Exoo, Unitarian minister and self-styled Exit Counselor, won his fight against extradition and may remain in West Virginia. Ireland wanted Mr. Exoo to stand trial on charges of murder, but the man who put Exit Counseling on the map insisted that he only helped. Snuff out the cig, love, and swallow the pills, was reportedly part of his assistance to a woman who wanted to die. She, however, had no terminal illness whatsoever and would have been better assisted by someone skilled in psychiatric counseling.

So Mr. Exoo showed a very depressed woman the final door, and he's feeling rather good about himself. He's so sure that he did the right thing that he's calling on the twenty-five states that criminalize assisted suicide to change their laws. In the meantime, he has to carefully avoid setting foot in one of those states.

Prosecutors were satisfied that Mr. Exoo participated in the murder of a woman who was too mentally fragile to make good choices, and as such he should have been packed off to Dublin to face the consequences. West Virginia judge Clarke VanDervort ruled that, because of the wording of the extradition treaty, Mr. Exoo could not be shipped overseas because West Virginia does not have a law on the books that bans assisted suicide.

A criminal can be extradited if the law they will be tried under in Ireland exists in the U.S. as well. In that case, say the prosecutors, if the Exit Counselor should exit West Virginia and wander into a state that has the necessary law, they will have him arrested. Ireland has not withdrawn its extradition request, so Mr. Exoo is not home free. Hence his suggestion that all of the fifty states erase their assisted suicide laws.

George Exoo may be a fine minister, but you'd think he would have more to offer than a push over the cliff after a depressed woman has taken a peek over the edge.