If you Google 'Dr Stephen Edwards' you will find news stories of him allegedly murdering his elderly mother, being sent to jail for three months and then on bail for four years until the case was dropped. Edwards, a former general practitioner who specialised in nursing home patients and palliative care, was deregistered after the charge of euthanising his mother was brought against him.
The case was closed after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given six to thirteen months to live in January 2020. He left Tasmania to live in inner Sydney. The story of how Edwards was charged with conspiring with his brother to murder his mother confronts the most fundamental questions of life and death, magnified by his own diagnosis of terminal cancer which he stubbornly refuses to accept.
His incarceration in Tasmania's most notorious high-security jail brought him into direct contact with mass murderer Martin Bryant as well as the inequities and perverse injustices of the prison system. Dubbed 'Dr Death' by his fellow inmates, he nevertheless earned their respect. He was only the second person in Australia to be granted bail for murder, and his treatment highlights the lottery that is the justice system. Perversely, the dropping of the charges against him makes it impossible to clear his name. His narrative of the events that led to his murder charge and his fight for justice makes for compelling reading.