Dr. Jack Kevorkian is on trial this morning in Pontiac, Michigan, where a court will determine if he committed murder by injecting a man with a lethal dose of drugs. Thomas Youk suffered from Lou Gehrig's disease, and he told Kevorkian he wanted to die.

McEWEN: Kevorkian videotaped the death, which was broadcast on CBS' "60 Minutes," to force courts to decide whether people have a right to be helped to die.

Dr. KEVORKIAN: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I'm Dr. Jack Kevorkian.

McEWEN: Now Kevorkian gets his wish. Yesterday he went on trial for murder in Pontiac, Michigan, representing himself, and that concerned the judge.

Unidentified Judge: Do you understand that you could spend the rest of your life in prison?

Dr. KEVORKIAN: There's not much of it left, Your Honor.

Judge: Do you understand that the rest of your life without parole?

Dr. KEVORKIAN: Yes.

McEWEN: Prosecutors have tried Kevorkian four times for assisted suicide, but he's never been convicted. This is the first time he's been tried for murder. Attorney Geoffrey Fieger has represented Dr. Kevorkian in previous trials, but not this one. He joins us from Detroit.

Good morning, Geoffrey. Always good to see you.

Mr. GEOFFREY FIEGER (Dr. Kevorkian's Former Defense Attorney): Good to see you again, Mark.

McEWEN: Dr. Kevorkian--this is the first time he's being prosecuted for murder. Four other times he was brought up on assisted suicide charges. Is he at greater risk of being convicted on these murder charges?

Mr. FIEGER: Well, actually, he was charged with murder in 1990 with the death of Janet Adkins and I had that case dismissed at the preliminary exam. He's in great danger, primarily because he's representing himself and that is not--that does not bode well, Mark.

McEWEN: Why does it not bode well, Geoffrey?

Mr. FIEGER: Well, there's an old adage--it's true, too. A person who represents himself has a fool for a client. You cannot represent yourself and see what's going on because everything is so subjective. Everything is involving yourself. Just as a surgeon would never agree to sit there and instruct a patient how to operate on themselves or encourage a patient to do so, I could never sit there and have a--have a--one of my clients represent themselves. He doesn't know what he's doing. And if by accident the jury feels sorry for him, that's the--about the only thing he can hope for.

McEWEN: Geoffrey, you've defended Dr. Kevorkian in the past. Why not this trial?

Mr. FIEGER: Because he said he wanted to represent himself. And I said, 'I can't help my client commit his own assisted suicide. I love you, Jack, but the issue isn't you. The issue is the right of people not to suffer. And since you want to make it you, you want to confuse the issue and have Jack Kevorkian be on trial instead of let the issue be on trial and continue to win, I can't assist you in that.'

McEWEN: Does he want to be convicted, do you think?

Mr. FIEGER: There's something in Jack that's always railed against success. The only success he ever had in life was my representation of him. And he fe--if the truth be told, my biggest adversary was not the courts, or the governor, or the legislature, or the prosecutor, or the police, it was Jack Kevorkian, trying to prevent me from representing him adequately. And now when he's insisting upon doing it, we have to wonder, does he want to be a martyr? Does he--he says he doesn't want to--the publicity. And yet now he's out there playing lawyer. He's not a lawyer and he doesn't understand the law at all. And believe me, from a person who knows him better than anybody, I'm telling you, he's standing up there absolutely unaware of what he's doing.

McEWEN: If he is convicted, Geoffrey, what will that do to the movement to end patient suffering?

Mr. FIEGER: Hurt it. Terribly. And that's ano--that's another thing that I told him. I said, 'Jack, this--it--the result of your action could be catastrophic for everything we worked for.' Now I just hope the jury understands the qualitative difference, Mark, between, for instance, let's juxtapose just that story you just ran about the horrors out at Yosemite. Some animals committed that crime; that's clearly murder. Juxtapose that with Jack Kevorkian. He's charged with the same crime. But certainly it's not the same act in quality or anything else. And I would hope, nevertheless--although his actions might technically fulfill some legal definition, they're very much like a doctor who disconnects a feeding tube or a breathing mechanism.

McEWEN: All right.

Mr. FIEGER: They cause the death but they don't get charged with murder.

McEWEN: All right. Geoffrey Fieger, we're going to have to leave it right there. Geoffrey, always good to see you. Thanks for being with us this morning.

Mr. FIEGER: Thank you very much.

McEWEN: Thank you.

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