Interesting case here.
This girl is obviously terrible, and I don't think anyone would dispute that.

But should she be tried for manslaughter? Should she be tried for any crime?

I'm not sure.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/08/31/its-now-or-never-texts-reveal-teens-efforts-to-pressure-boyfriend-into-suicide/?tid=sm_fb

‘It’s now or never': Texts reveal teen’s efforts to pressure boyfriend into suicide

By Abby Phillip August 31 at 2:45 PM

Michelle Carter listens to defense attorney Joseph P. Cataldo argue for the involuntary manslaughter charge against her to be dismissed, citing five separate arguments at Juvenile Court in New Bedford, Mass., on Aug. 24. (Peter Pereira/The New Bedford Standard Times via AP)

Michelle Carter knew that if anyone found her text messages to her boyfriend Conrad Roy III, she might go to jail.

“ read my messages with him I’m done. His family will hate me and I can go to jail,” Carter texted a friend after her 18-year-old boyfriend used a gas-powered water pump to commit suicide in the parking lot of a KMart.

Carter had asked Roy in a text message to delete her messages before he carried out the suicide last summer, but investigators found them anyway.

According to prosecutors, Carter pressured her boyfriend to go through with suicide for almost a week before he carried out the act. She counseled him to overcome his fears; researched methods of committing suicide painlessly; and lied to police, his family and her friends about his whereabouts during the act itself and after, prosecutors said.

Carter, who was 17 at the time of Roy’s death, now faces manslaughter charges in juvenile court in Massachusetts.

Her attorney argues, however, that the charges should be dropped because Carter’s messages are protected by free speech. According to attorney Joseph P. Cataldo, Carter was “brainwashed” into supporting Roy’s plan for suicide.

“He ultimately persuaded a young, impressionable girl,” Caldato told reporters, according to South Coast Today. “Eventually he gets her to endorse his plan.”

But in an indictment released Friday, prosecutors outlined in nauseating detail the extent of Carter’s alleged role in helping Roy overcome his doubts about suicide.

For more than a week in July 2014, Carter and Roy exchanged hundreds of messages in which Carter insisted that Roy would be better off dead.

“You’re finally going to be happy in heaven. No more pain,” she told him in one message. “It’s okay to be scared and it’s normal. I mean, you’re about to die.”

According to prosecutors, the two had struck up a romantic relationship — mostly online — in 2012. Her lawyer says they had only met a few times in person over the course of two years prior to Roy’s death.

Roy had a history of depression and had attempted suicide in the past, but his family was hopeful that he would get through it.

“He seemed to be pulling out of it,” his grandmother Janice Roy told WBZ.

Text messages recovered by police, however, suggest that by 2014, Carter had gotten tired of Roy’s idle talk of suicide and she wanted him to go through with it — now.

“You always say you’re gonna do it, but you never do,” Carter complained. “I just want to make sure tonight is the real thing.”

Another time, she texted: “You can’t keep pushing it off, though. That’s all you keep doing.”

Carter was insistent, even when Roy steered the topic to other things:

ROY: How was your day?

CARTER: When are you doing it?

Roy said he was having a good day, but Carter wasn’t satisfied.

CARTER: Really?

ROY: Yes.

CARTER: That’s great. What did you do?

ROY: Ended up going to work for a little bit and then just looked stuff up.

CARTER: When are you gonna do it? Stop ignoring the question???

Roy had doubts, and he was scared, according to his texts. What if it didn’t work and he ended up injured for the rest of his life? How would his family cope with the loss?

Carter had answers.

He would be her guardian angel in heaven.

She would comfort his family and they would move on.

If he followed the directions he had found online for killing himself with carbon monoxide, it would “100 percent work,” she said.

“There isn’t anything anyone can do to save you, not even yourself,” she told him.

But committing suicide would require tools. Roy thought about using a tube to channel the exhaust from his truck’s tailpipe into the vehicle but realized that the diesel engine emitted lower levels of carbon monoxide that might make failure more likely.


Carter was confident that it would work and told him why.

“If you emit 3200 ppm of it for five or ten minutes, you will die within a half hour,” she told him. “You lose consciousness with no pain. You just fall asleep and die.”

But Carter didn’t love that idea, either, because she feared that Roy would make up an “excuse” to explain why it didn’t work.

“I bet you’re gonna be like ‘oh, it didn’t work because I didn’t tape the tube right or something like that,'” she texted him “You always seem to have an excuse.”

When Roy decided to use a generator instead, Carter was impatient.

“Do you have the generator?” she asked him.

“Not yet LOL,” he replied.

“WELL WHEN ARE YOU GETTING IT?” she wrote.

Eventually, Roy did find a generator — his father’s — but it was broken. Carter told him to take it to Sears for repairs.

And if Roy couldn’t find a way to use carbon monoxide, Carter suggested alternatives: “I’d try the bag or hanging,” she told him. “Hanging is painless and take like a second if you do it right.”

The day of Roy’s death — July 12, 2014 — he and Carter exchanged texts in the early morning hours.

“You can’t think about it. You just have to do it,” Carter said, telling him she didn’t understand why he was hesitating.

“I’m gonna eventually,” he replied. “I really don’t know what I’m waiting for but I have everything lined up.”

She suggested that he take Benadryl to fall asleep and allow the fumes to work.

She worried that he wouldn’t go through with it because the sun would soon be coming up.

She suggested that he go to an empty parking lot.

They texted throughout the day about the plans, about Roy’s doubts, and about Carter’s insistence that “the time is right” and that he was ready.

At the same time, Carter appeared to be preparing her friends and Roy’s relatives for his eventual death. Days before his suicide, Carter texted a friend named Samantha and claimed that Roy was missing — though she was communicating with him at exactly the same time about how to fix his father’s broken generator.

The day before his death, she told her friend: “I’m thankful that our last words were I love you.”

At some point on the night of July 12, Roy went through with the suicide, using a gas-powered water pump. He died of carbon monoxide poisoning inside the cab of his pickup truck.

While he was in the truck with the pump running, he was on the phone texting and talking with Carter, she told her friend.

“Like, honestly I could have stopped it,” Carter texted Samantha months later. “I was on the phone with him and he got out of the car” because the carbon monoxide was working, she said. She added that she “told him to get back in.”

Roy’s body was found by police on the morning of July 13.

A judge will now decide whether Carter will face charges in his death. She will appear in court again on Oct. 2.

After his death, Carter became a self-proclaimed advocate for mental health.

She organized a fundraising tournament in Roy’s memory and posted on Facebook and Twitter about her attempts to save her boyfriend’s life.

“Even though I could not save my boyfriend’s life, I want to put myself out here to try to save as many other lives as possible,” she wrote on Facebook.

If this was another person that encouraged someone to commit sucide and assisted them properly no one would raise a fuss over this. The fact she tried to cover this up is proof she knew the ramifications of her actions.

Hopefully the system does its job and brings justice to this unfortunate young man's family.

When I first heard about the story, I had figured it was some type of thing where he was determined to kill himself and she was telling him, "Okay, if you have to, just end your pain."

But after reading the articles it seems it was much more like -

Him: How are you doing today?

Her: Have you killed yourself yet?

Him: No, I think I'm feeling better about myself today.

Her: That'll pass. Go ahead and kill yourself. It's for your own good.




So, yeah, prosecute her.

If I were her parents I wouldn't be able to sleep with both eyes closed.
___________________________________________________________


DJTB YOMM

Ultimately he did it to himself. Yes, she was encouraging him (persistently) to kill himself.
But she didn't have a direct hand in his death.

Who is to say he wouldn't have done it without her encouragement? It's obvious that he was suicidal to begin with.

I wouldn't want to defend her either though really

To hack a bank and or how to breach security to get into a bank and rob it physically I think they will get charged.

Or if someone asks someone to kill someone and that person is impressionable enough to do it, the person who asked will get charged even they didn't physically do it themselves.

So I think manslaughter is correct.

suicide is considered a crime...

this is basically harassment-themed assisted suicide

im sure they can think of something...

criminally negligent fuckery

Section 43A. (a) Whoever willfully and maliciously engages in a knowing pattern of conduct or series of acts over a period of time directed at a specific person, which seriously alarms that person and would cause a reasonable person to suffer substantial emotional distress, shall be guilty of the crime of criminal harassment and shall be punished by imprisonment in a house of correction for not more than 21/2 years or by a fine of not more than $1,000, or by both such fine and imprisonment. The conduct or acts described in this paragraph shall include, but not be limited to, conduct or acts conducted by mail or by use of a telephonic or telecommunication device or electronic communication device including, but not limited to, any device that transfers signs, signals, writing, images, sounds, data or intelligence of any nature transmitted in whole or in part by a wire, radio, electromagnetic, photo-electronic or photo-optical system, including, but not limited to, electronic mail, internet communications, instant messages or facsimile communications.

*shrug*

I can't imagine some of the conversations she must have had with this
guy's friends and family in order to organize that fundraising event.
Imagine the amount of false consolation she gave to genuinely bereaved
people. Imagine the amount of solace people offered her!

They must be sick to their stomachs. Shit, I am.

She had the whole fundraising/advocate thing lined up.

All he had to do was die.

She should be ostracized the same way convicted sexual offenders are.
Her neighbors, potential employers... hell, her local grocery store baggers
need to know who they're dealing with.

n/m

Let's remove hate crimes from this equation for the moment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio

I think there's a relatively strong argument that this girl's speech was intended to incite imminent lawless action, but that only means it's not protected by the First Amendment. So maybe we don't have protected speech here, but what crime have we committed?

Massachusetts statutory law does not define voluntary manslaughter. Rather, Massachusetts common law, as announced by the courts, provides a definition for manslaughter:
The unlawful killing of another, intentionally caused from a sudden transport of passion or heat of blood:
(1) upon a reasonable provocation and without malice or upon sudden combat; or
(2) from the excessive use of force in self-defense.

As with voluntary manslaughter Massachusetts statutory law does not define involuntary manslaughter. Rather, Massachusetts common law, as pronounced by the courts, provides the definition for involuntary manslaughter:
One can commit involuntary manslaughter through:
(1) an unintentional killing occasioned by an act which constitutes such a disregard of the probable harmful consequences to another as to be wanton or reckless; or
(2) an unintentional killing resulting from a battery.

Based on a quick google of what constitutes manslaughter in Mass, I don't think we have manslaughter. At best you can maybe argue the first point of involuntary manslaughter, but then you have to make text communication not just unprotected speech, but an act, AND an act that was in disregard of PROBABLE harmful consequences. I don't see it.

Second part 1

Unless she gets up on the stand and says she intended for him to die.

Mrs sociopath did you mean for your bf to die?

Yes - automatic conviction

No - fits the statute

Maybe she doesn't take the stand. But her lawyers going to have to argue that the her motive and intention was for him to die.

the day he killed himself during the process, he got out of the car and she was on the phone like "get back in the car and do it." then she stayed on the phone with him until he did it. as soon as he was done, she text her friend saying "i think he killed himself." her intent was well known, which is why she erased all of her text messages to him and asked him to delete hers to him.

Of mind.

But did she commit any criminal act?

And that's not really a defense.

Nor can anyone read her mind and really know.

While I admit I am besides the point (potentially) re: manslaughter, my question was if I could be charged with something if I incited someone to off someone else.

OK. So, maybe manslaughter wouldn't fit. But to get legal, that doesn't cover my question. Is there something I could be charged for if I incited someone to kill someone else sans something hate crime related and (adding this now) payment.

But. Just bullshitting out loud, if I pay someone to kill someone else I would get done (I assume). Take away the money and leave the instruction, surely I still get done (I assume) given what can happen in organised crime. So now we're left with the distinction between killing someone else and getting someone to kill themselves. I'm assuming again, though, that if I incited some kind of kill yourself death cult that the authorities would find some way to charge me if the body count was high enough. So, my question remains, is there some way the authorities could get at me, whether or not manslaughter is relevant?

I think it would have to be a specific Massachusetts statute, and I'm no expert on Mass law.

She also has a big head

That we know of, at least. And he ain't never getting out.

she anxiously orchestrated that shit right up to telling him to get back into the truck to finish the job.

cant be more blatantly abetting than that.

But according to the DSM he had Suicidal Behavior Disorder, a medically defined mental illness

He wasnt in his right mind, and not capable of responding rationally to her messages

Precedent??

Euthanasia by proxy?

He provided the methods but the person pushed the button.
IS this the same?

Although she seems terrifying. UGH
*****************************************
. . . If I have something to say when there is a reason involved, I am perfectly willing to talk. Katherine Hepburn

From a legal perspective that is a MASSIVE distinction.

This girl persistently assisted and motivated someone to kill themselves and we're discussing if there's a loophole in which she shouldn't get locked up.

Some of this shit is black and white and we've been trained to search and find the grey area when it isn't necessary.

What kind of person takes the action of this girl? Answer that question. There has to be something severely wrong with you to do something like that. I'm sure an attorney would even try to get her off on insanity if they can.

Fuck that...let this girl rot in jail for that shit.

when are you gonna do it?

you bullshittin'

ole girl is evil as Fuck. If I raised her I would feel like such a failure.

At least not from my perspective.

I suppose that differing perspective is part of why people hate lawyers though

Shit, my wife is a lawyer.

But let's not act as if finding loopholes isn't a part of the job.

As dumb and extreme of an example it is, the Martin stand-up in which he asks "what the fuck is the trial about" in regards to evidence against Jeffrey Dahmer.

There are hundreds of millions of dollars wasted on our legal system. And I'm all for people getting a fair trial because obviously people have been innocently convicted but like I said above, something are simply black and white. I'm not even getting to the technicalities of if there was a criminal act committed. The evidence spells out that she is a piece of shit and that is going to override all else in my mind. There are times when the laws and the ways they're written don't add up.

BUT she needs to be in a mental facility for sure...

i mean hell if she gets enough followers she now creates a church of folks who wish to kill themselves and mass suicides...

i mean if that was my son i'd at the very least track her down and punch her in the sternum

as I read more and more on the case, it seems that the guy wanted someone to talk to and was trying to do better but found someone who did the opposite of what he needed at the time. i have no clue what hold this girl had over him but it's unfortunate that she held so much influence in his life...she was power tripping and she did this for the sympathy, attention, and fame this would garner her. How she thought no one would ever see her texts or the call logs is beyond me.

She should be locked up. Criminally. Is there a crime to charge her with? if nothing else, bullying. You don't have to be stereo-typically mean to be a bully...but she did bully him. she pretended to be his friend and led him down a path of despair and any time he tried to break free, she returned him on that path. This is all disgusting. I hope she dies a horrible death alone and full of pain.

but that was the first thing that popped into my mind. bullying. harassment.

i think Charles Manson is a great example of someone who didn't technically commit a crime and is in jail for conspiracy. This is hard considering it was a suicide. but involuntary manslaughter perhaps is the best fit considering the below:

Elements of the Offense

Three elements must be satisfied in order for someone to be found guilty of involuntary manslaughter:

1. Someone was killed as a result of act by the defendant.
2. The act either was inherently dangerous to others or done with reckless disregard for human life.
3. The defendant knew or should have known his or her conduct was a threat to the lives of others.

if nothing else, she admitted she knew what she was doing and she could have stopped it but didn't. even when he tried to stop it, she kept pushing.

to constantly pump someone to off themselves THEN capitalize on their death afterwards is just evil.


does it really matter?

wonder what bin's doing?
http://i.imgur.com/phECCMp.jpg

I hope he has at least one crazy family member that can beat the brakes off that girl

“You always say you’re gonna do it, but you never do,”
“I just want to make sure tonight is the real thing.”
“You can’t think about it. You just have to do it"

talking bout sex for the 1st time

“I bet you’re gonna be like ‘oh, it didn’t work because I didn’t tape the tube right or something like that,'”
“You always seem to have an excuse.”

contraceptive use

http://media.masslive.com/breakingnews/photo/2015/08/24/michelle-carter-82415-0982d0b8a3c90eb3.jpg

gotdamn she got a big head and it was filled with some evil...

how she gonna post #wecanendsuicide

>how she gonna post #wecanendsuicide
>
>

http://www.returnofkings.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/michelle-carter.png

I really widely she would just tell us what her motive was for doing this..

gofundme page?

around here ...

its not even in the same stratosphere

whether from friends, family, foes, internet trolls, ect

Nobody knows what is going on on the other side of a computer screen. Okp's type that phrase all the time then I see the same okp's showing outrage and sympathy for actual victims of suicide and telling people to reach out for help.

Maybe that is just the nature of the internet though. I don't do any other message boards or social networking so, maybe people do that on other sites too.

because it has been stated plenty of times on this board that it shouldn't be tolerated. We have lost quite a few okps and their family members to suicide. I think after the death of radin, people here have been more mindful about what they say. The few ppl who *might* still say it have been jerks, and always are...and they aren't the ppl in this thread or any other suicide thread acting like they care...

yes ppl have joked, but for the most part, that's over. That was never the same as what this girl did. and the false comparisons belittle the situation at hand. While we can agree that it's a bad thing to say, in no way are the events the same.

seeking help/encouraging people to seek help. This must have been 2012/2013 though. I've been told to go kill myself on here before - can't remember by whom.

(I fully realize that by calling him out he will launch an attack on me. Let's see if he uses those words though)

not even close...

She certainly should be locked up for her actions. If she was encouraging him to pull the trigger on someone else and killed that person she would be locked up for murder. Put her ass in jail.

"used a gas-powered water pump to commit suicide in the parking lot of a KMart."

Ok of all the ways to go.

he actually was aware that he was dying but it's one of the more easier ways to go because essentially you just fall asleep and don't wake up.

just seems odd to use a water pump in a parking lot.

I had a friend who was ashamed to let his family know he was down and out and sleeping in his car... he died from CO2 poisoning because his car was fucked up and he left the engine on to stay warm.