CALIFORNIA: A Nice Point of Law

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CALIFORNIA A Nice Point of Law The police of Long Beach, Calif, had no doubt that Arta Christiansen died by her own hand. After threatening suicide at least half a dozen times during her one year of married life with House Painter Oswald Christiansen, she spent the evening at a bar, then went home and took a .22 rifle out of a closet. She asked Oswald to load the gun for her, and he promptly did so. She told him what she was going to do. "You haven't got the guts," he said. Then & there, she proved him wrong.

After Arta's funeral last week, cops arrested Christiansen under a state law that makes it a felony to abet a suicide. But a California court had declared such a law unconstitutional. There is no California law against suicide itself. Asked Deputy District Attorney Ted C. Sten: "How can a person be guilty of a felony as the result of aiding and abetting a deed which is not contrary to law?"

At Sten's order, the police let Christiansen go, a free man.