|
kkaliforniaa -> RE: 17yo girl charged with murder by texting (6/16/2017 2:47:43 PM)
|
I liked the article from the New York Times better.
quote:
Michelle Carter Is Guilty of Manslaughter in Texting Suicide Case
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE and JESS BIDGOODJUNE 16, 2017
TAUNTON, Mass. — A young woman who sent a barrage of text messages to another teenager urging him to kill himself was found guilty Friday of involuntary manslaughter in a case that many legal experts had expected to result in an acquittal.
The verdict, handed down by a judge in a nonjury trial, was a rare legal finding that, essentially, a person’s words alone can directly cause someone else’s suicide.
The judge, Lawrence Moniz, of Bristol County Juvenile Court in southeastern Massachusetts, said the conduct of the woman, Michelle Carter, toward Conrad Roy III was not only immoral but illegal. Ms. Carter, who faces up to 20 years in prison, will be sentenced on Aug. 3.
Ms. Carter was 17 in July 2014 when she encouraged Mr. Roy, 18, whom she called her boyfriend, to kill himself. On July 12, while she was miles away, he drove alone to a Kmart parking lot and hooked up a water pump that emitted carbon monoxide into the cab of his truck. When he became sick from the fumes and stepped out, prosecutors said, Ms. Carter ordered him by phone to “get back in.” He was found dead the next day.
Knowing that Mr. Roy was in his truck and in a toxic environment, the judge said, Ms. Carter took no action.
“She admits in subsequent texts that she did nothing, she did not call the police or Mr. Roy’s family,” Judge Moniz said. “And finally, she did not issue a simple additional instruction: ‘Get out of the truck.’”
The verdict came as a surprise to many legal experts, because suicide is generally considered, legally, to result from a person’s free will.
Judge Moniz acknowledged that Mr. Roy had taken steps to cause his own death, like researching suicide methods, obtaining a generator and then the water pump with which he ultimately poisoned himself. Indeed, Judge Moniz said that Ms. Carter’s text messages pressuring him to kill himself had not, on their own, caused his death.
But then, Judge Moniz homed in on the cellphone calls between Ms. Carter and Mr. Roy while he was poisoning himself in his car. At the time, he said, Mr. Roy had fearfully climbed out of the car.
“He breaks that chain of self-causation by exiting the vehicle,” Judge Moniz said. “He takes himself out of that toxic environment that it has become.”
Judge Moniz pointed out that, during previous suicide attempts in 2012, Mr. Roy had second thoughts and reached out to friends and family for help. But, the judge said, Mr. Roy did not get help when he talked with Ms. Carter.
“She instructed Mr. Roy to get back into the truck, well knowing his ambiguities, his fears, his concerns,” Judge Moniz said. “This court finds that instructing Mr. Roy to get back in the truck constituted wanton and reckless conduct, by Ms. Carter creating a situation where there is a high degree of likelihood that substantial harm will result to Mr. Roy.”
As he finished, Judge Moniz asked Ms. Carter, who was sobbing, to stand. He then concluded: “This court, having reviewed the evidence, finds you guilty on the indictment with involuntary manslaughter.”
A spectator let out an audible “wow” as the judge pronounced her guilty.
In the courtroom’s front benches, the two families on either side of the aisle — Ms. Carter’s and Mr. Roy’s — were also sobbing. Mr. Roy’s mother, Lynn, left the courtroom with a tissue in hand and a tight smile, while Ms. Carter rocked ever so slightly back and forth at the defense table, her chin in her hands.
In a brief statement, Conrad Roy Jr., Mr. Roy’s father, thanked the prosecutors and said: “This has been a very tough time for our family and we’d like to process this verdict, that we’re happy with.”
As he left the courthouse, Ms. Carter’s defense lawyer, Joseph P. Cataldo, said that he was “disappointed” in the verdict and that the case was “pending,” indicating a possible appeal.
Relying heavily on voluminous online correspondence, the trial exposed the interior lives of two troubled teenagers, putting their thoughts, their secrets and their rock-bottom self-images on display. Judge Moniz said both of their families had been “immutably changed” by the case, and as arguments closed on Tuesday, Mr. Roy’s family and Ms. Carter herself were left in tears.
The judge’s decision surprised many legal experts, who had said that, despite the callousness of Ms. Carter’s conduct, the case presented a stiff challenge to prosecutors because Massachusetts, unlike dozens of other states, has no law against encouraging suicide.
Moreover, Ms. Carter was not at the scene. To secure a conviction of involuntary manslaughter, prosecutors needed to show that Ms. Carter’s words alone, typed in thousands of text messages to Mr. Roy, were reckless and essentially killed him.
Legal experts said the judge might have wanted to convey to Massachusetts lawmakers that they needed to pass laws to hold people accountable for their online conduct.
“This sends a strong message to people that using technology to bully people into committing suicide will not be tolerated,” said Daniel S. Medwed, a law professor at Northeastern University.
But Mr. Medwed said he was surprised at the guilty verdict, because the manslaughter charge seemed “a stretch” to begin with. Because Ms. Carter was not at the scene, and Mr. Roy ultimately acted alone, he said, it was difficult to prove she “caused” the death.
“We don’t see this every day,” said Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. She said that the decision by a single court in Massachusetts was unlikely to set a legal precedent, but that it could have a social effect.
“On the broader societal spectrum, I think it sends a message that behavior that we sometimes attribute to odd teenage behavior can actually be so extreme that it’s homicide,” she said.
“What used to be seen as just a tragedy,” she added, “is now going to be classified, perhaps, as a crime.”
The virtual nature of Ms. Carter’s role was not a barrier for the judge. And his verdict signaled that the law might need to catch up with cultural and behavioral changes wrought by technology.
A prosecutor made that very point in arguing that Ms. Carter’s physical absence from the suicide scene was immaterial.
In a trial that lasted a week, prosecutors used Ms. Carter’s text messages to paint a portrait of a needy, insecure teenager who pushed Mr. Roy to kill himself in an effort to gain attention. Defense lawyers used the same messages to depict Ms. Carter as a misguided teenager, addled by medication, who thought she was helping a deeply troubled friend.
Ms. Carter and Mr. Roy texted incessantly about their troubles: depression for him, an eating disorder for her, and profound social anxiety for both. When Mr. Roy told Ms. Carter in June 2014 that he was seriously considering suicide, she told him he had a lot to live for and urged him to seek help.
“I’m trying my best to dig you out,” Ms. Carter wrote.
“I don’t wanna be dug out,” Mr. Roy answered, adding later, “I WANT TO DIE.”
By early July, she began to embrace the idea. “If this is the only way you think you’re gonna be happy, heaven will welcome you with open arms,” she wrote.
Ms. Carter said she would look like a “fool” if Mr. Roy did not kill himself. They talked at length about how he could kill himself with carbon monoxide. “If you emit 3200 ppm of it for five to ten mins you will die within a half hour,” she wrote. In the last days of his life, she told him repeatedly, “You just need to do it.”
With such texts projected onto large screens in the courtroom, there was no question that Ms. Carter had encouraged Mr. Roy to kill himself. The lawyers argued instead about motive.
Prosecutors said Ms. Carter had caused Mr. Roy’s death because she wanted the sympathy that would come to her as the “grieving girlfriend.” In a ploy to get attention from girls she admired, the prosecutors said, Ms. Carter erroneously told them that Mr. Roy was missing two days before he actually was. That Mr. Roy was still alive, they said, increased the pressure on Ms. Carter to make sure he would soon be dead.
“Every time he came up with an excuse not to do it, she kicked his feet out right from under him and told him why it didn’t matter, why he still needed to die,” an assistant district attorney, Katie Rayburn, said during Tuesday’s closing statements.
Ms. Carter’s lawyers cast her as a naïve teenager who wanted to help people. She began encouraging Mr. Roy to kill himself, they said, only after she became “involuntarily intoxicated” with antidepressants and was convinced he was determined to end his life.
Mr. Cataldo argued that Mr. Roy had a history of depression, had tried to kill himself before and had conducted hundreds of online searches for ways to die.
“She takes no physical steps. She doesn’t threaten him with serious bodily harm,” Mr. Cataldo told the judge in his closing argument. “Conrad Roy knows what he is doing, your honor. He made a choice to commit suicide.”
“Michelle Carter,” Mr. Cataldo added, “did not kill Conrad Roy.”
And yet, in the weeks after Mr. Roy’s death, Ms. Carter texted friends that she felt responsible: that she could have stopped him but did not. And she feared her texts would implicate her.
“Sam they read my messages with him I’m done,” she wrote to one friend. “His family will hate me and I can go to jail.”
The following link talk about Michelle Carter and a similar case in Minnesota.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/is-it-a-crime-to-encourage-suicide-unusual-massachusetts-case-of-conrad-roy-and-michelle-carter/
quote:
By Stephanie Slifer CBS/AP March 3, 2015, 6:00 AM
Is it a crime to "encourage suicide"? Teens' texts under scrutiny
BOSTON - Prosecutors likely face an arduous task in proving that an 18-year-old Massachusetts girl committed involuntary manslaughter by encouraging a male friend to commit suicide, experts say.
Michelle Carter, of Plainville, was 17 when police say she encouraged her friend, 18-year-old Conrad Roy, of Mattapoisett, to commit suicide. Roy, who had a history of mental illness, was found dead in his car behind a K-Mart in Fairhaven, about 60 miles south of Boston, on July 13, 2014. He had used a generator to commit suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning.
It wasn't until February 5, 2015 -- more than six months later -- that Carter was indicted by a grand jury on a charge of involuntary manslaughter after the Bristol County District Attorney's Office says a lengthy investigation found she "strongly influenced" Roy's decision to kill himself.
In a police report, Fairhaven police Det. Scott Gordon wrote, "Carter not only encouraged Conrad [Roy] to take his own life, she questioned him repeatedly as to when and why he hadn't done it yet, right up to the point of when his final text was sent to her."
The report further alleges that, prior to his death, Roy texted Carter that he was scared and didn't want to leave his family, but despite that, Carter continued to encourage him to take his own life, "and when he actually started to carry out the act, he got scared again and exited his truck but instead of telling him to stay out of the truck and turn off the generator, Carter told him to 'get back in.'"
However, Joseph Cataldo, Carter's attorney, says his client didn't commit a crime and he believes a judge will dismiss the charge prior to trial. He tells 48 Hours' Crimesider that once all the evidence is made public it will be clear that Carter "counseled" Roy not to take his own life.
"I think it's rather suspect they didn't release all the other text messages they claim the two of them had... It's a sad story, a tragedy, but it's not manslaughter," Cataldo says. "What we have here is a young man who made a voluntary decision to end his own life. It was his voluntary decision. His death was not caused by Michelle Carter."
According to Cataldo, the case is unprecedented in the state of Massachusetts. He says he's not aware of any cases in the state "where a person who is 30 miles away is charged with committing manslaughter by text."
Massachusetts has no statute criminalizing assisted suicide, although 40 other states do. It can, however, prohibit it under common law.
Barbara Coombs Lee, an attorney and president of Compassion & Choices, a non-profit organization that provides guidance and resources about aid in dying, says Massachusetts' lack of a criminal prohibition against assisted suicide will make the case against Carter an uphill battle for the prosecution.
She says what went on between Michelle Carter and Conrad Roy is precisely what such laws are designed to prohibit.
"People shouldn't manipulate and coerce mentally vulnerable victims. There should be some way that society punishes this behavior," Lee says.
CBS News' legal analyst and former Massachusetts prosecutor Rikki Klieman acknowledges that while the accusations against Carter are "horrendous," the case doesn't neatly fit into any statute in Massachusetts.
"It's not cyberbullying, it's not harassment, it's not stalking. So the prosecutor says, 'This is reprehensible conduct, disgusting conduct, must-be-punished conduct,' so he goes forward and says, 'Let's call this involuntary manslaughter.' Does it neatly fit in that definition? Not so much. We really are going to have a test case here," Klieman told CBS This Morning.
Minnesota prosecutor Paul Beaumaster knows firsthand the challenges that come with prosecuting a case that involves allegations of encouraging suicide.
Beaumaster was the prosecutor in the case against William Melchert-Dinkel, a Minnesota man who was charged in the deaths of an Englishman and a Canadian woman after authorities say he used the Internet to manipulate them into killing themselves.
Authorities said Melchert-Dinkel was obsessed with suicide and hanging and sought out potential victims online. When he found them, prosecutors said, he posed as a female nurse, feigned compassion and offered step-by-step instructions on how they could kill themselves.
He was charged and ultimately convicted of aiding in the suicides of Nadia Kajouji, 18, of Brampton, Ontario, and Mark Drybrough, 32, of Coventry, England. Drybrough hanged himself in 2005, and Kajouji jumped into a frozen river in 2008.
A Rice County, Minn. judge found that he "intentionally advised and encouraged" the victims to take their lives, but the defense appealed, saying Melchert-Dinkel's actions might have been immoral, but they were not illegal.
The Minnesota Supreme Court reversed Melchert-Dinkel's convictions last year. The justices found that the part of Minnesota's law that simply bans someone from "encouraging" or "advising" suicide is unconstitutional because it encompasses speech protected under the First Amendment.
But the justices upheld the part of the law that makes it a crime to "assist" in someone's suicide -- and said speech could still be considered a factor. The case went back to the initial judge, who ruled last year that Melchert-Dinkel did assist in Drybrough's suicide, by providing detailed instructions on hanging, on which Drybrough followed through. The judge found Melchert-Dinkel guilty of attempting to assist Kajouji's suicide, because she ultimately rejected his advice to hang herself and jumped into the river instead.
He was ultimately sentenced to 178 days in jail and will avoid prison if he abides by probation terms for the next 10 years.
Beaumaster, the prosecutor in the Melchert-Dinkel case, told Crimesider he believes the case against 18-year-old Michelle Carter in Massachusetts will center around similar issues, such as whether or not words in and of themselves constitute assisted suicide and whether certain statements made via text or on the Internet are protected under the First Amendment.
The Melchert-Dinkel case resulted in a very narrow statute in Minnesota which clearly defines when it is still a crime to assist in suicide, and Beaumaster said similar statutes are needed throughout the country.
In the Michelle Carter case, "I do think there is culpabilty," he said. "Society needs to have outliers be held accountable for statements that result in death or injury to another person."
Michelle Carter, now 18, is charged as a youthful offender since she was 17 at the time of Roy's death, but she could still face punishment as an adult - up to 20 years - if convicted. She is currently free on $2,500 bond.
Authorities have not commented on a motive in the case, but according to police documents, Conrad allegedly sent text messages to her friends and to Roy's mother expressing concern about Roy's whereabouts on the day he committed suicide, despite having been in constant contact with him and encouraging him to take his own life.
The police documents indicate authorities believe she was putting together "a plan to get sympathy." They also allege that after Roy's death, Carter organized a softball tournament to raise money for mental health awareness in honor of Roy and posted several messages on social media about suicide prevention and how much she missed Roy.
In a message to Roy's mother dated July 25, 2014 -- twelve days after his death -- Carter wrote, "...There was nothing anyone could do to save him no matter how hard they tried. I never tried harder at something in my life."
A bit disappointing with the Minnesota case, less than 200 days in jail [less for good behavior I'm guessing] for coercing two people into killing themselves. It doesn't make sense why assisted suicide isn't stricter. If you're not a spouse or the victim's doctor [for more than 6 months].. .. Kevorkian served 8 years [of a 10-25 year sentence], and his patients were rational.
|
|
|
|
