With a name like “Dr. Death,” Jack Kevorkian might easily be imagined as a ruthless leader of some genocidal militia; but the name came from his more artistic, if somewhat morbid, pursuit of photographing the eyes of dying patients. His ideas on euthanasia started crystallizing in the 1980s, and he laid them out in numerous articles in an obscure German medical journal. His first recorded trial for euthanasia came in Michigan, where he was acquitted because the state had no law forbidding the practice. Kevorkian got bolder in his attempt to challenge the law on that practice. And the law won.

On this day, April 13, in 1999, Dr. Jack Kevorkian is found guilty for the death of Thomas Youk, 52, an ALS sufferer whom Kevorkian injected with a lethal cocktail of chemicals. Kevorkian videotaped Youk’s assent and the operation was shown two months later on CBS’s 60 Minutes.

Kevorkian could have allowed Youk to inject himself, but actively administered the lethal injection and released the video in order to challenge the conviction of first degree murder. The presiding judge admonished Kevorkian before reading his sentence. ”You had the audacity to go on national television, show the world what you did, and dare the legal system to stop you. Well, sir, consider yourself stopped.”