MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER ACHIEVES DEATH WISH

The defense lawyer must think the jurors are a bunch of morons. But if the jurors buy the ‘assisted suicide’ defense, they are a bunch of morons.

IS HIRING A HITMAN TO KILL YOU MURDER OR SUICIDE? JURY FACE EXTRAORDINARY ETHICAL DILEMMA IN ‘DEATH WISH’ TRIAL
By Richard Hartley-Parkinson

Mail Online
March 2, 2011

A jury has been asked to define assisted suicide in the murder trial of a former convict, hired by a suicidal motivational speaker.

Jeffrey Locker had fallen into financial difficulties and wanted to kill himself, so he twice actively tried to find someone to help him die.

The first man he recruited, homeless Marvin Fleming, took the $4,000 in cash along with some jewellery and knives but ran off without going through with killing Locker.

He then turned to Kenneth Minor, a 38-year-old former convict from Harlem, New York, who is currently on trial over his murder at Manhattan Supreme Court.

Locker, 52, convinced Minor to tie Locker’s hands behind his back and hold a knife at his chest - something upon which both the prosecution and defense lawyers agree.

However, they disagree on whether it was a coldhearted murder or an act of assisted suicide in which Minor held the knife as Locker forced himself onto it.

Prosecutor Peter Casolaro said: ‘Jeffrey Locker was a foolish, dishonest, pathetic man. But Kenneth Minor was a vicious and callous man.

‘Mr Minor ignored the basic principle of human decency, which is not to kick a man when he’s down.’

Daniel Gotlin, Minor’s defense lawyer, said: ‘Mr Locker killed himself. He wasn’t murdered by some wicked man.

‘This was an arrogant individual that used another human being to end his life - a person who was down and out.’

Locker, from a suburb in Long Island, had maxed out his $16,000 credit card limit and his savings fell from $86,000 to $5,800 in the six months before his death.

Defence lawyers have said that his death had been an elaborate plan to defraud insurance companies, having taken out policies worth $14million.

Minor’s legal representatives described Locker as a ruthless conman who took advantage of his persuasive skills to get a ‘sucker’ to help his family get at the insurance policies he took out just before he died.

Lockers body was found, bruised and covered in blood, inside his car, parked near the Robert F Kennedy Toriborough Bridge on July 16, 2009.

Both prosecution and defense are expected to sum up their cases later this week when the jury will start deliberating its verdict.