Ex-nurse gets jail time for assisting suicides

When former Faribault, Minn., nurse William Melchert-Dinkel was convicted last month of assisting in one suicide and attempting to assist in another, his attorney said the case was far from over.

Defense attorney Terry Watkins reiterated that Wednesday when Melchert-Dinkel, 52, was given a six-month jail sentence and a stayed three-year prison term in the 2005 suicide of a British man and the 2008 suicide of a Canadian teenager, both of whom he met years ago in an Internet forum.

Rice County District Judge Thomas Neuville refused a motion to defer the jail time. Watkins said it's likely that Melchert-Dinkel will have served his sentence before any higher court rules on an appeal.

"It's been 5½ years," the defense attorney said. "We're appealing on several issues and depending on what the Court of Appeals does on it, we might start this whole thing over again."

Rice County Attorney Paul Beaumaster, however, said, "As far as I'm concerned, it's the end."

The jail and stayed prison sentences are what is called for in state guidelines, Beaumaster said. Melchert-Dinkel also was barred from using the Internet, except for work purposes, he said.

Melchert-Dinkel's case has stretched on for six years, and it led to the Minnesota Supreme Court striking down part of a state law on encouraging and advising suicide that has been in the statutes for 128 years.

According to evidence, testimony and the defendant himself, Melchert-Dinkel was obsessed with suicide and sought out suicidal people online by posing as a female nurse who planned to kill herself.

He acknowledged taking part in chats about suicide with about 20 people and entering fake pacts with about 10 of them.

Mark Drybrough, 32, of Coventry, England, and Nadia Kajouji, 18, of Brampton, Ontario, were two of the people he talked to about hanging themselves. Drybrough hanged himself in 2005; Kajouji jumped off a river bridge in 2008.

Melchert-Dinkel was charged in 2010 in Rice County and convicted in 2011 by Neuville for advising and encouraging their suicides.

In March, the state Supreme Court reversed his convictions, saying that part of a state law that makes it illegal to advise or encourage suicide was an unconstitutional restriction on free speech. The ruling upheld a part of the law that makes it illegal to assist in a suicide and said speech alone can be used to assist or enable a suicide.

The case was sent back to the district court because the judge did not rule in 2011 about whether Melchert-Dinkel actually assisted in the two suicides.

The families of the man and the girl who killed themselves wrote victim-impact statements when Melchert-Dinkel was convicted and sentenced the first time. Beaumaster asked the judge to review those statements before Wednesday's sentencing.

"They obviously weren't excited about coming down one more time to say the same thing," Beaumaster said. "They really just wanted him to have some penalty for his part in the death of their loved ones."

Watkins said that when the case was appealed the first time, "there was one issue. We look at this now and there are four or five constitutional issues. We don't agree with the way the courts handled it," he said.

Melchert-Dinkel's appeals will center on First Amendment and due-process issues, Watkins said.

"We agreed speech could be prohibited in assisting a suicide," he said. "But it's our position that there would have to be a nexus [link] between the speech and the act."

Although Melchert-Dinkel talked to Kajouji about hanging herself, she committed suicide by jumping off a bridge.

The defense attorney also said the original criminal complaint only talked about advising and encouraging suicide, not assisting in it. The state should have amended the complaint and, since it didn't, it becomes a due-process issue.

Beaumaster said the Supreme Court addressed the latter point in its ruling, saying that "you had notice, you argued this the whole way through."

At Wednesday's hearing, Melchert-Dinkel apologized for his actions.

Watkins said afterward that what his client did was "unsavory and reprehensible, frankly. But it is not criminal. That is what we've hung our hat on from the start and I have no reason to believe we will not be successful."

Pat Pheifer • 952-746-3284