The Right To Die: SA euthanasia activist gets house arrest after pleading guilty to murder

“My children want a father not a martyr.”

This was the decision that Sean Davison came to after wrestling with the question of whether he should fight three charges of premeditated murder in a full trial.

Davison, a 58-year-old scientist, was arrested in Cape Town in September 2018 on what would eventually become three murder counts, after assisting in ending the lives of three people between 2013 and 2015.

In all three cases, the individuals in question had asked Davison for help in dying due to his international profile as an activist for the right to die movement.

This was the second time that Davison had faced the courts over this issue. In 2010, in his birth country of New Zealand, Davison was charged with the murder of his terminally ill mother, Dr Patricia Ferguson, after administering her with a lethal dose of morphine on her request.

Tutu’s support for Davison, and the wider pro-euthanasia cause, has been unwavering for the past three years. After Davison’s arrest in 2018, Tutu released a statement calling on legislators internationally to afford “people who have reached the end stages of life the right to choose how and when to leave Mother Earth”.

Police originally arrested Davison in 2018 on just one murder charge, relating to the death of Davison’s friend Anrich Burger in 2013. Burger was a doctor who had been rendered quadriplegic in a car accident in 2005. After several meetings with Davison where Burger expressed his desire to die, the professor “caused [Burger’s] death by administering a lethal concoction of drugs”, according to the state’s court papers.

In the course of the subsequent investigation, the state added two further murder charges to Davison’s rap sheet.

Justin Varian asked Davison for help in ending his life in 2015 after suffering a stroke and being diagnosed with motor neuron disease, which caused him difficulty in carrying out even basic life tasks.

Davison could not administer Varian drugs due to his inability to swallow, so the state recorded that in that instance, Davison “placed a bag over [Varian’s] head and attempted to make use of helium deoxygenation”. Varian’s final cause of death was determined by the state to be “asphyxiation and/or helium deoxygenation”.

The third murder charge related to the death of Richard Holland in 2015, a young sportsman who lost all motor function following a bicycle accident in 2012. Holland could communicate only through spelling out words via eye movements, a method he used to confirm to Davison — in the presence of his family — his desire to die. Davison administered a lethal dose of pentobarbital (a barbiturate).

In the run-up to Davison’s trial, he announced that he was facing legal costs of about R2.8-million for what he called “the fight of my life”.

Other euthanasia advocates had hoped that Davison might plead not guilty and fight the charges in full court, with the desire that this might cause a change in the law.

At the time of his arrest in September 2018, his organisation Dignity SA released a statement saying that “Dignity SA wishes to reaffirm that our mission is a change in the legal position regarding assisted dying in South Africa”.

The South African courts have previously indicated that there is little judicial appetite for this decision, however, with the Supreme Court of Appeal resolving in 2016 that the status of assisted dying should be left to Parliament to deal with.

Ultimately, Davison opted for a plea bargain agreement which saw him plead guilty to the murder charges and avoid jail time. Although the mandatory minimum sentence for murder in South Africa is 15 years, Cape Chief Justice John Hlophe accepted that there were compelling mitigating circumstances in this instance, including that Davison was “remorseful for his actions”.

“I know there will be many people disappointed that I accepted a plea bargain, and did not go to trial,” Davison said on Wednesday in a statement distributed through Dignity SA.

“If I had done this I may have been found not guilty, and thereby led to a law change. However, I was facing three life sentences in prison and the stakes were too high. I have three young children and my children want a father not a martyr.”

Davison will now serve three years under house arrest, during which time he cannot leave his house except for work, to visit a doctor or to carry out religious worship. He is also required to undertake 16 hours of community service a month.

Regarding his employment at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), where Davison runs a DNA forensics laboratory, Davison told Daily Maverick:

“The university will be reviewing my court plea and the summary of facts that were presented in the court before making a decision on my future employment. Since my arrest in New Zealand in 2010, the university has been emphatic in supporting me, and I am confident this will continue. UWC has always been a leader in human rights issues.”

Should Davison be tempted to continue his work in assisted dying, the stakes are now higher than ever. If he is convicted of murder, attempted murder, or any serious crime within the next five years, a currently suspended sentence of eight years’ imprisonment will automatically kick in.

The relative, who identified himself as Varian’s cousin Russell, said: “[Varian] asked my brother and myself if we couldn’t end his life. I would have loved to have done it but I knew that it was too much of a sacrifice. I would probably end up in jail.” DM

This article originally incorrectly stated that Davison changed the method of Justin Varian’s death from helium deoxygenation to asphyxiation. This was based on an earlier claim of the state in court papers which has since been retracted. Daily Maverick regrets the error.