Jack Kevorkian, aka “Dr. Death”, the controversial pathologist well-known for advocating the patients’ right to die via physician-assisted suicide, announced on Monday he will run for congress as an independent.

Kevorkian, who served eight years in jail after he admitted he had assisted at least 130 patients to die from 1990 until 1998, also said that, if elected, his top priority will be to promote the Ninth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The Ninth Amendment protects rights not explicitly specified elsewhere in the Constitution and the 79-year-old retired pathologist said he interprets it as protecting a patient’s choice to die through assisted suicide.

"I have no ties, no fetters. I am free," the pathologist said.

He said he will run against the "tyranny" of the U.S. Supreme Court which has stripped the Americans of their rights, as he put it.

His main rival will be Republican Rep. Joe Knollenberg, who currently holds the congressional seat in Detroit's suburbs and seeks re-election. Former state senator and state lottery commissioner Gary Peters will run for the Democratic nomination.

The state’s non-presidential primaries are scheduled for Aug. 5. The three candidates will fight for Michigan's 9th District, which includes the upscale suburbs of Bloomfield Hills and Birmingham.

The last patient Kevorkian assisted to death was Thomas Youk, a 52-year-old Oakland County man with Lou Gehrig's disease. The pathologist was convicted of second-degree murder after he acknowledged that he did the same with about 130 other patients.

A video depicting Kevorkian when he was administering lethal drugs to the man suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease was aired by a CBS news program.

The only state that legalized the assisted suicide was Oregon in 1997. Similar attempts in the states of Michigan and Hawaii have failed.