In re Caulk: A Prisoner's Right to Die—The Factor of Intent

In prisons throughout the United States, prisoners commonly use hunger strikes as an avenue of protest to make personal demands, to call attention to poor prison conditions, or to make various political statements. Prisoners typically choose this route because they view their own bodies as one of the few things over which they actually have control and because the extreme slowness of a hunger strike gives others the chance to meet their political or personal demands. When confronted with such attempts at starvation, prison officials almost invariably have resorted to force-feeding the hunger strikers, although in recent years some prison officials have done so only upon the authority of a court order. In In re Caulk, the New Hampshire Supreme Court held that the state's interests in preserving life, enforcing prison security and order, and maintaining an effective criminal justice system outweigh the prisoner's right, based on the right to privacy, to engage in a hunger strike. Accordingly, the court found that force-feeding the defendant prisoner was not unconstitutional. An important factual difference, however, separates the Caulk case from other hunger strike cases. The prisoner, Joel Caulk, made no demands upon the state and sought no attention by his attempt to starve. Instead, Caulk sought only to accomplish his death. This Note will examine whether both the absence of demands and the presence of a true intent to die affect the state's interests in force-feeding a prisoner. A focus on this important distinction suggests that the state interests, which traditionally have allowed a state to force-feed a prisoner, do not justify the force-feeding of Caulk.