A top German court has ruled that it is not a criminal offence to cut off the life support of a dying person if that person has given their consent.

德国最高法院裁定，在经过同意的前提下，撤掉一个垂死之人的生命补给不算是刑事犯罪。

The Federal Court of Justice acquitted¹（释放） a lawyer who had advised the daughter of a comatose³（昏迷的） woman to cut off her feeding tube.

Earlier the patient had expressed her wish not to be kept alive artificially.

The lawyer appealed to the federal court after a lower court had given him a nine-month suspended sentence（缓刑） .

The mother, in her seventies, fell into a coma² in 2002 and had been in a vegetative（植物的） state for five years when her daughter removed the feeding tube.

After the daughter's action hospital staff reinserted a feeding tube, against the children's wishes, but the patient died of heart failure two weeks later.

Germany's Justice Minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, said the Karlsruhe federal court ruling brought clarity to cases involving terminally ill patients.

The ruling does not legalise active assisted suicide（协助自杀） , which is punishable by up to five years in prison in Germany, the news website Spiegel Online reports.

The ruling applies to passively assisting death through the removal of artificial life support. It makes this legal if the patient has given clear consent（同意，赞成） .