Kevorkian take their name from Jack Kevorkian, an American former pathologist. He is most noted for publicly championing a terminal patient's right to die via euthanasia; he claims to have assisted at least 130 patients to that end with a suicide machine he built himself. He famously said that "dying is not a crime." Between 1999 and 2007, Kevorkian served eight years of a 10-to-25-year prison sentence for second-degree murder. He was released on June 1, 2007, on parole due to good behavior.