On March 29,2000, in U.S. v. Wood, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit held that a physician cannot be convicted of murder simply for adopting, in an emergency setting, a risky course of treatment intended to prolong life that, when carried out, effectively hastened death. Finding the government's evidence flawed, based on several evidentiary errors and an erroneous denial of a motion for judgment of acquittal on murder charges, the court reversed the conviction of involuntary manslaughter and ordered a new trial.

Virgil Dykes, an 86-year-old man, was suffering from severe abdominal pain when he arrived at the Veterans Administration hospital in Muskogee, Oklahoma, on February 5, 1994.