Advocate of Assisted Suicide Loses Life

A man with Lou Gehrig’s disease died in Lincoln, R.I., before he could carry out his plan to kill himself to protest Rhode Island’s ban on assisted suicide. Heavily sedated on morphine, Noel Earley, 48, had been hovering between a deep sleep and unconsciousness since Sunday. Earley’s friend, Steven Ames, said Earley thought he would know when to kill himself before the disease left him too weak, but he miscalculated. In September, Earley announced he would inject himself with a lethal mix of drugs to defy Rhode Island’s new law making assisting a suicide punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.