July 5, 2026
Swiss Court Rules No Legal Privilege in Sarco Case
This week, the Swiss Federal Court ruled that a lawyer and his employee, at a prominent Zurich law firm, who was retained by Exit for legal advice with regard to the first use of the Sarco in the canton Schaffhausen in September 2024, are co-accused in the matter and, as such, professional lawyer-client privilege does not apply.
This is an astonishing decision by the highest court in Switzerland.
Legal Privilege
Legal privilege is a cornerstone of the rule of law.
This privilege means that the legal advice and communications between a lawyer and his/her client is confidential. But it is about more than this.
Legal privilege is also about ‘promoting compliance with the law’. It does so by ‘enabling lawyers to give full and considered advice on a client’s legal obligations’.
Under Swiss law, documents and other materials arising from communications between a client and his lawyer are protected from seizure and may not be used as evidence by the prosecution, unless the lawyer is himself an accused person in the same matter.
The Swiss Federal Court has decided – on the most spurious of grounds – that the Schaffhausen prosecutor can now have access to Exit’s entire client file (as seized following a raid on the Zurich offices of its law firm) as it relates to Sarco.
The file contains no incriminating information. Furthermore, the public prosecutor’s office already has the essential content of this file because it was proactively disclosed.
The real problem with the decision is that it made a lawyer and his employee defendants in order to circumvent the fundamental principle of attorney-client privilege.
Grounds for Suspicion
There is currently a criminal investigation into the first use of the Sarco.
The lower court in Schaffhausen held that there was no indication whatsoever that the lawyers might have committed a criminal offence and, accordingly, that attorney-client privilege applies.
Upon the Schaffhausen public prosecutor’s office’s appeal, the Swiss Federal Court has now ruled that privilege does not apply because there are reasonable grounds of suspicion that the lawyers retained by Exit were involved in the commission of the use of the Sarco.
They had not simply provided legal advice.
The Court has highlighted the following as the grounds upon which the suspicion is based:
Point 1
The first ground relied upon by the Court is that the lawyer notified the public prosecutor’s office that the assisted suicide took place. Why this could give rise to a reasonable suspicion that the lawyer committed a criminal offence remains a mystery. The Court offers no explanation.
Point 2
The second decisive factor is that the lawyers were encountered by the police on a road near the location where the Sarco was used.
However, the Court omits several crucial facts.
It does not mention that the lawyer was never present at the location where the Sarco was used but was waiting approximately six kilometers away.
Nor does it mention that the lawyer arrived only after the police was already at the scene and that his reason for being there was to act as defense counsel for The Last Resort President, Florian Willet, who was the only person present when the Sarco was used.
This is because it is standard procedure in cases of assisted suicide for a criminal investigation to be initiated.
The public prosecutor’s office even announced the opening of an investigation when the lawyer in question had informed the office that the Sarco will be used in the canton of Schaffhausen.
Point 3
The third factor upon which the Court has based their ruling that a suspicion exists, relates to the amount of communication, on the day Sarco was used, between Exit and the lawyer in question.
The Court does not identify the nature of the communication, only that there was communication.
Presumably, the Court has no idea as to the content of the communication?
Incredulously, the content and nature of the communication appears not to matter.
Interestingly, Steven Winter, a Swiss lawyer (and former prosecutor in Schaffhausen) has noted that it is:
‘precisely this careful and transparent conduct – the very behaviour one would ordinarily expect from a lawyer – that, in the Court’s view, meant that the lawyer’s involvement had ‘gone beyond the provision of legal advice’.
The Federal Court’s decision has also drawn sharp criticism from Konrad Jeker, a well-known Swiss lawyer writing on a prominent criminal law blog.
Among other things, he writes:
‘The Federal Supreme Court’s reasoning makes the blood run cold in the veins of the legal profession’. He also describes the judgment as ‘likely the judicial error of the decade.’
Suspicion of What?
Ok, so Exit’s lawyers (and let us not forget the Dutch journalist) are all co-accused in regard to the first use of the Sarco in the forest in Schaffhausen.
The alleged crime is that Exit made the Sarco available for use by a very sick American woman for ‘selfish motives’.
If selfish motives can be proven, there is no protection under Article 115 of the Swiss Criminal Code.
In Switzerland, assisted suicide is legal as long as it is done for altruistic purposes and as long as the person does the action that brings about their death themselves.
Non-selfish motives might be understood as no financial gain and no personal enrichment.
So, as things currently stand, the six people involved (there were seven but Florian Willet killed himself following 70 days of pre-trial detention) are accused of assisting a suicide for selfish motives.
- 3 people from Exit
- 2 lawyers from Switzerland
- 1 journalist from the Netherlands
It is the job of the prosecutor to now discover such ‘sinister’ goings-on.
Selfish Motives?
The Sarco was always going to disrupt the status quo of assisted suicide in Switzerland.
This new technology not only offers a drug-free, de-medicalised means of a peaceful elective death, but it was also offered free of charge.
An assisted death in Switzerland normally retails at around CHF11,000 (USD14,000). In Swiss case law, this figure has been justified (despite questions continuing to be asked).
This is why all the assisted suicide groups price-fix their service at around the same amount.
Don’t rock the boat.
With the Sarco, there was no money changing hands. No one was getting rich. There was no big business model.
That was the point of the Sarco.
This new technology was about creating a more equitable system and fairer access to a peaceful, elective death.
As Exit’s tagline has long stated, ‘a peaceful death is everybody’s right’.
The lady set aside money to pay only for the liquid nitrogen she used in the Sarco.
She also left €1400 for expenses such as body removal, cremation and the repatriation of her ashes.
This money was in the blue folder that was handed to the police by Florian Willet.
Florian says that when the police arrived and he asked for his lawyer to be present (Florian was himself a lawyer and so knew the benefit of having legal representation), he was told that this was not possible because his lawyer has been arrested.
At this stage it was obvious that something extraordinary was taking place.
If Not Financial, What Other Selfish Motives Could There Be?
At the current time, the charge sheet states that the use of Sarco is being investigated for reason of selfish motives.
The lawyers stand accused of being involved and in this involvement of also having selfish motives.
So, at the crux of this entire ‘crime of the decade’, is that Exit made the Sarco available for selfish motives.
So, if not money, what?
One of the grounds upon which the prosecutor is mounting his allegation of selfish motives stems from the July 2024 press conference which Exit held in Zurich.
This, according to the prosecutor, is evidence of self-promotion.
In reality, the press conference was forced upon Exit. This is why.
In the run up to the anticipated use of Sarco by a different American woman in early July 2024, news leaked out to the media.
This leak came about despite the efforts of the Exit team to keep the plans as quiet as possible.
A press conference to state the facts (correct the non-facts) became Exit’s most effective means of communication.
This is why the press conference was held. The press conference was a reaction to the reporting. It was undertaken to set the record straight.
New technologies (such as Sarco) require explanation. Providing information about them is nothing more than being transparent.
To immediately assume that there are selfish motives behind this is to fail to recognize that the interested public has a right to information.
It is the core mission of the media to inform the public by taking a critical yet objective view of issues.
We have observed that certain media have failed to maintain a critical distance from the Sarco project.
In any case, it is the media’s specific responsibility to keep a critical eye on the judiciary.
One would actually expect this Federal Court ruling to serve as an opportunity to critically examine this matter.
To Conclude
The Schaffhausen prosecutor, supported by the Swiss Federal Court, are on a mission to uncover a smoking gun.
They seem to believe an ugly truth will come out within the privileged correspondence between Exit and their Zurich lawyers.
We are sorry to disappoint.
What they will find is months of dialogue as Exit’s planned logistics of this ambitious project were addressed, such as:
- the incorporation of the key findings of the previous 2020 legal report from Professor Daniel Hurlimann;
- the legal status of the chosen location; and
- the administrative paperwork and numerous declaration forms to be completed by the recipient of the assisted suicide (identical to those used by Pegasos and Dignitas).
At all times, the overarching goal was to stay within Swiss law. This responsible approach included to minimise the unknowns, and not to take unnecessary risks.
To stay within Article 115 of the Swiss Criminal Code.
Exit’s lawyers were professional, considered and insightful in their advice. They were patient and detailed in their reasoning.
They were, in short, everything that was expected, of a ‘Chambers-ranked’ international law firm.
Exit