Wilson v. Illinois Department of Financial & Professional Regulation

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge.

In September 1998 one of Dr. Robert Lance Wilson’s terminally ill patients was within hours of death. He was in pain (morphine no longer worked for him) and suffocating but had refused to have a breathing tube inserted. Wilson concluded that the only possible palliation was unconsciousness. As Wilson was injecting a drug to achieve that objective, the patient’s heart stopped. Wilson’s travails then began.

The coroner classified the patient’s death as murder, and the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation summarily suspended Wilson’s medical…