Assisted dying is currently illegal across England and Wales. Assisting or encouraging suicide is prohibited under Section 2 of the Suicide Act 1961. It is a very converging topic and is currently being debated within the House of Lords and Commons. A Bill titled “Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill” was introduced in the House of Commons in October 2024. The bill then passed through the House of Commons in June 2025 and was then introduced to the House of Lords.
The bill is currently still making its way through the requisite stages in the House of Lords and is due to be considered for the committee stage on 14 November 2025 where there will be a line-by-line examination of the bill. As with any bill to become law it will go through intense scrutiny, as this will potentially change the lives of many people within England and Wales. Given how sensitive the topic is, there are many opposing views, for example concerns have been raised that by partially lifting the ban on assisted dying but only for defined groups the bill may give rise to claims that it is discriminatory towards groups that are excluded.
Freemans Solicitors have had a front row view of what effect a bill such as this one could have had on a person’s life. Our Partner, Kishoree Kotecha Pau, was the lead litigator in the case of R v Desai [Guilford Crown Court] 2017. Mr Desai was a highly respectable pharmacist who was charged and acquitted of the murder of his father, who pleaded with his son to end his life. Mr Desai’s father was the victim of a violent robbery in his home in Zambia during which he suffered brain injuries which required surgery, suffered severe arthritic conditions of both knees and after a failed surgery left him with significantly impaired mobility. He lost his beloved wife and then later his pet dog. Mr Desai’s father was devastated by the losses and his own physical health and mental health and persistently begged his son to help end his life. We represented Mr Desai who had given his father a smoothie laced with morphine, stolen in effect from his own pharmacy. The drinking of this smoothie led to the death of Mr Desai’s father. Mr Desai later handed himself to the police. He was charged with murder and pleaded guilty prior to trial to the alternative count of assisted suicide and separately to two counts of theft (for the drugs taken from the pharmacy).
Mr Desai was acquitted of the murder following an application by our counsel that there was no case to answer, mid-trial. He was then sentenced for the assisted suicide count and thefts, the Judge remarking that Mr Desai’s “acts of assistance were acts of pure compassion and mercy”. Mr Desai was sentenced to 9 months custody suspended for 9 months with no further conditions. It was an emotive case where the Judge took consideration of Mr Desai’s good character and the contextual background to his acts.
The judge also considered the Guidance given by the Director of Public Prosecutions and stated where an offence is committed under the Suicide Act there is no inevitability that there will always be a prosecution, in fact few occur. This guidance alone may suggest that the bill will have less impact on potential defendants arising from the Suicide Act, but it will provide more clarity on the law and where people, such as Mr Desai, would stand.
Given the new bill arising it will be interesting to see if this will have any retroactive impact on convictions such as Mr Desai’s, though there will be thorough scrutiny of both sides of the debate.
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Kishoree Kotecha-Pau is quoted in the Legal 500
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