Aids Wife's Suicide, Gets Life In Prison

1920

High Court Decides Convicted Man Must Pay Penalty.

DETROIT, Mich. — No matter how much a person may be suffering and desirous of death, any one who places within his reach the means to commit suicide is guilty of murder in the first degree as an accessory before the fact. That is the finding of the Supreme Court of Michigan in the appeal of Frank C. Roberts of Mount Pleasant, Mich.

Roberts' wife was a victim of multiple sclerosis and was absolutely helpless. She had once attempted to commit suicide by carbolic acid, but had failed. As she lay in bed she asked her husband to mix some paris green with water and leave it by her bedside. He did so. She drank it and died.

Roberts was sentenced to solitary confinement in the Jackson State prison for life.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Aug. 7, 1920, p. 4.