| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 科技法律研究所碩士在職專班 === 106 === The “Patient Autonomy Act” is soon to be enforced. By then, a patient can choose a dignified death through making an advance directive based on which a physician decides to terminate, withdraw or withhold life-sustaining medical treatment. Nonetheless, assisted suicide crime (Article 275) is written in the Criminal Code of the Republic of China, underlining that the legal interest of life cannot be abandoned. However there have been few studies on whether the protection of the right to life includes the right of an individual to choose a dignified death, the ways judicial practice reconciles, at a constitutional level, the conflict of values between “self-determination for one’s life” and “absolute protection of life,” as well as how to explain the application of Article 275 of the Criminal Code and yet consider the self-determination for one’s life at the sentencing level.
Based on the empirical research of the verdicts on assisted suicide crime, this paper attempts to find out if there was any case of assisted suicide crime by physicians as a result of the Hospice Palliative Care Regulation. On the basis of the collation and analysis of the foundation and constituting elements of the punishability of assisted suicide crime in the verdicts, as well as the reasons for increased or reduced punishments, the factors with greater importance and influence for sentencing review are put forward so as to explore Taiwan’s criminal justice system’s discretion standard for convicting people of assisted suicide in the hope of accurately understanding the applicability of Article 275 in judicial practice. Based on this standard, Article 14 of the Patient Autonomy Act that exempts physicians from criminal responsibility is examined, focusing on how it should be explained and applied at the criminal code level; and whether there is any ground for convicting people of assisted suicide. Moreover, by means of comparison, lessons are drawn from the legal systems of Oregon and California of the USA and Japan. Finally, according to the above conclusion and interviews with relevant professionals, this paper puts forward the ways of applying Article 14 of the Patient Autonomy Act, the criminal responsibility exemption clause, and discusses the possible challenges confronting Taiwan’s hospice care legal system so as to provide a foundation for the future reform of such system in Taiwan.
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