And so Judge Lawrence Moniz found Michelle Carter guilty of involuntary manslaughter.
ADDED: "Being A Bitch Is Now A Criminal Offense, Apparently/Teen convicted for texting someone to death." That's the headline at Above the Law. Elie Mystal writes:
If “free will” is to mean anything, you cannot “suicide” a person to death. You can murder someone, you can accidentally murder someone, you can pay someone to murder someone for you, you can set up a criminal organization under which murders occur on your behalf, you can even set up conditions so inherently unsafe that you are criminally responsible for anybody who happens to die. But you can’t kill a person who kills themselves. The self-killing breaks the causal chain between your actions, however reprehensible, and the death.
Until today....
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230 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 230 of 230Look, folks. If the young lady had acted the way the judge suggested she should have acted, she's off the hook. If she does nothing at all, she's probably still off the hook. Instead, the person he thought of as his last, best friend bullied him into completing the act. Guilty.
That's the verdict. Did the judge actually sentence her to twenty years? I believe that he hasn't pronounced sentence yet.
There are a lot of people on here trying to use careful wording to convict her for being a bad person. Unless you believe in magic, words don't compel action. As Donald Trump will happily point out, hope doesn't compel action. One person advising another person to do something dangerous does not implicate the speaker if the hearer obeys unless the speaker was in a position of authority over the hearer.
What was her authority? How could her words compel his action?
The reaction of some otherwise intelligent people on this thread to this case show the danger of not drawing a sharp line betwen words and deeds.
While this woman is despicable, I don't like the verdict because it's just one more stop on the road to a lawless society and a precedent ripe for abuse. What's next? What if I convince someone to buy a vehicle with a poor safe rating and he dies?
Fen, I'm pro-assisted suicide but anti-bullying.
I read the texts and testimony with interest. I'm glad the judge found her culpable because I fear what it might allow without recourse if she were found not guilty.
She didn't just support his decision, she actively shaped his decision-making.
"The reaction of some otherwise intelligent people on this thread to this case show the danger of not drawing a sharp line betwen words and deeds."
The reaction could also show the danger of not recognizing the real impairment mental health issues have on making decisions.
If you put a cape on a mentally-challenged kid, told him he now had superpowers, and instructed him to step in front of a speeding truck because he could not get hurt, does that leave you off the hook because the kid had free will?
Saint Croix said...
Suicide is illegal in Massachusetts.
No it's not, which is one reason why nobody was charged with "suicide".
One of the things that is disturbing is that this is texts, which seem to be missing from the arguments (or if it isn't then it surely appears to play an insignificant role).
For texts, it takes two people. She was not present.if she was, she would have had the ability to force the boy to do something he may not want to do.
However, he did not put down the phone (presuming a phone). We are assuming that texts are an extension of a physical presence, which is wrong and totally incorrect.
This reminds me of the old phrase used to educate children (and some adults); "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me". While it may seem twee, today, it is still valid. But we are accepting that it is ok to be emotionally weak and suggestive, that when we have a tragedy where an individual(s) shift into the emotionally unstable, we cannot recognize it until it is too late.
This judgment--sound, in my view--should not set a precedent as there are factors here that make it unique due to the situation. Unfortunately, legal precedence often replaces judgment and common sense.
thanks, Chick!
stlcdr & others: The judge's verdict was that it had been proved beyond reasonable doubt that Carter was guilty of BOTH prongs of involuntary manslaughter (as that crime has been defined by case law in MA, which is a common-law state) - reckless and wanton conduct and reckless and wanton failure to act. In MA the crime of involuntary homicide also comprises the "negligent homicide" category found in some other states. So it can be used to prosecute corporate crimes of neglect that lead to death. Say, not fixing a sprinkler system which leads to mass deaths in a fire. Not posting hazard cones and fixed warning signs on a piece of road that had an collapsed area.
Specifically, the failure to act came during the interval after which the decedent first left the truck and was persuaded to get back in. At that point, the judge ruled that Carter's failure to inform anyone about his impending death was a reckless and wanton failure to act.
Carter had at that point a "presence" on the scene in that she knew what was happening, she knew what the outcome would be if she did not intervene, and she knew that she could intervene. Legally, I suspect that amounts to "presence". She was a player, an actor, in a scene that had only two actors, and as one of those two actors lost ever more capacity to act, legally it must be true that the responsibility of the remaining actor correspondingly increased.
The judge's verdict is on Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4i6bGFfQ9E
Rae - suppose I found someone close to me in a state of stupor with an empty bottle of pills and a suicide note, but still breathing. In MA, if I did not attempt to get assistance, I could be charged with involuntary manslaughter. I am not sure that this is not a good legal precedent. Suppose that in the above situation I found that person after getting a message from her that she needed to see me. Would a failure to act in that situation not be homicide by negligence? Would it not be the case that the person's intention to die might not have been fixed, and that she intended me to find her and get that assistance?
Consider the PA indictments of the frat boys who let that kid come close to death in the frat house because they didn't want to get in trouble for providing alcohol to minors - there is, I think, a real legal need for some category of egregious crimes of neglect that lead to death or extreme disability.
What interests me the most about this thread is that most commenters are neither carefully thinking through the legal issues, worrying about the actual law, nor interested in what the previous, existing MA precedents are. For example, the rant featured in the post is quite wrong, legally speaking. It was written by someone who neither had interest in MA law or knowledge of it.
I also find it very likely that the boy deliberately failed to delete the texts (even though he told Carter he had). He had a long-standing pattern of suicide attempts that he either aborted or frustrated by calling someone during the attempt. I think the boy was highly disturbed and intended for Carter to get "made" if she did not intervene to save his life. If he survived he could trust her - but if he died, he'd take her down too. He even sort of warned her of that at one point, although indirectly. But then, I have read all the texts (they were released by the DA's office) and a bunch of the court documents.
I also do not think that any one of those trying to make the case that just speech can never be a criminal act are even serious. Speech can be a criminal act in many instances, and the failure to speak, the failure to disclose, may also be a criminal act in many circumstances. I very much doubt you would want to live in a world in which a doctor would incur no criminal liability for informing a depressed patient that he/she had a fatal cancer when the patient did not, or a friend incurred no criminal liability for informing a friend that the gun the friend had picked up and was fiddling with was, in fact, loaded.
Assisted suicide, including doctor-assisted suicide, is a common law crime in Massachusetts.
You want to protect the right to help people kill themselves, you need to pass a statute. Right now, they don't have one. Or if they do, I haven't seen it.
Obviously we don't charge dead people with committing the crime of suicide. That would be pointless, and super-harsh on the family.
But in a case where you are punishing somebody for involuntary manslaughter for killing somebody, it is appropriate for the judge to explain to the family that their boy is also responsible.
In other words, suicide is a crime, and it's a crime to assist somebody in suicide. Don't let the lack of prosecutions of the former confuse you about the legality of the latter.
This judge denounced the girl like she's the one who is bad, and it's all her fault.
Very faulty reasoning, I think.
Finally, my "meta" takeaway from this thread is that both this case and the public interaction with it is somehow similar to our political dysfunction. Because our political process has become less focused on policy and more on rhetoric, said rhetoric most often being combined with a determined endeavor to disconnect from all available facts, we are slowly moving to treat all controversies as religious - as matters of dogma rather than matters of pragmatic possibility.
Individuals take positions that put them in one camp or another, or allow the individual to assume a position of perceived superiority. But very few worry about the underlying process any more.
Thus, a man like Trump becomes a dangerous disruptor, because he's the person who comes around and wants to actually do something about problems. And the funny thing is that Trump is treated as the Great Destroyer, although in practice his deeds are of moderation and well within the previously understood parameters of liberal democracy. What is so destructive and shocking is merely his refusal to allow the rhetorical flourishes to dominate the cultural scene.
Who killed King Duncan? Is it Macbeth or his wife, who kept urging him to do it, steadily pushing through resistance after resistance?
Saint Croix said...
...blather blather...
In other words, suicide is a crime,
No it's not. You're wrong and won't admit it.
I'm pro-assisted suicide but anti-bullying.
I think a huge number of people in our culture are just like you. But the ramifications of that comment are so awful. So let me talk a bit about why you are wrong.
1) Killing is way more serious than bullying. I think bullying should be a non-crime. It's amorphous, it's mostly words, it's emotional bullshit. If the bully is doing something criminal, like battery or assault or stalking, then charge him with that. But what is a bully? A name-caller?
2) The word "bully" was probably invented by Teddy Roosevelt, who thought it was awesome. He was always yelling, "Bully!" That's because Roosevelt was an active guy and loved to fight for what is right. Little did he know that wimpy sensitive passive-aggressive people would one day try to send all the bullies to prison. "Bully?" he whispered.
3) I look forward to a future where assholes kill themselves and leave behind a list of all the bullies who need to go to jail. Not! Why not stand up to the bully and be a hero? But there's no damn way we should empower kids to kill themselves and leave behind the Bully List of People Who Need To Go To Prison. Instead of normalizing suicide why not attack it as the evil it is. And encourage young men and women to be strong and confident, not weak and pathetic.
4) People with an ideology like their ideas. You like the idea of autonomy. Lots of people do. "I do what I want. I'll kill myself if I want. But don't bully me!" And yet, when you get out into the real world, instead of finding wonderful people assisting in suicide, what you keep running into are assholes, bitches, and bullies, all those mean people in the world. I mean, autonomy is a nice academic belief system, but if you start getting upset at all the deaths and angry relatives and unhappiness that result from your ideas, maybe you ought to do a re-think.
5) No man is an island. You might stop and consider that a suicide is bullying the shit out of anybody who cares for him. And people who threaten suicide are manipulative monsters. Why give this violent person authority over the rest of us? Reject this violence as the shitty move that it is.
You're wrong and won't admit it.
If you want to convince me, Fern, you're going to have to do some actual legal research like Mark did at 12:03.
"that's a very, very, very bad ruling by the judge"
Agreed. Welcome to the top of the slippery slope.
One big sticking point to me (as I understand it) is there's no recording of the call. There's a second-hand (from Carter, to be fair) account of it in a text to someone else.
Leftist judges, and I assume this one being in Massachusetts is a card carrying leftist, will twist the law to obtain the result they desire because of their leftist agenda. This girl did an awful thing, but does it rise to the level of manslaughter? Many learned legal minds are saying not so, and I tend to agree.
Did she do wrong? Absolutely. Did she commit manslaughter by the legal definition? No.
I think a huge number of people in our culture are just like you. But the ramifications of that comment are so awful.
No, pro-assisted suicide is a vaguely-worded term, as is bullying. I specifically referenced Fen, just to let him know that someone could agree with his issues about the freedom for thoughtful people to kill themselves must be tempered with not letting the weak, mentally ill, and easily manipulated be killed by people egging them on.
You can't put grandma in a box, hook her up to a suicide machine, put the button in her hand, and tell her to push it when everyone yells "surprise", only to say "well, she pushed the button!" Not if you want to live in civilization.
You don't want people to think suicide is a solution? And to acknowledge the pain (bullying) it leaves behind? Then we need to address the issues which cause people to believe it is. And I can tell you that bullying is a major cause of believing that (a) you're worthless, (b) people would be better off without you, and (c) suicide is the only way out of your issues.
More to the point. I don't know how we're going to have assisted suicide without a real crackdown on the bullying in this country. I want people to be responsible for their actions and their choices. That includes people who put others down to lift themselves up. That includes those who prey on the weak to make themselves feel better. That includes those who enjoy exploiting others because they were once exploited.
With freedom comes responsibility.
Did she commit manslaughter by the legal definition? No.
"Manslaughter is the killing of one human being by another that is not premeditated. In Massachusetts, involuntary manslaughter occurs when someone unintentionally causes the death of another person, when the defendant was engaging in some type of reckless conduct or while committing a serious battery upon another person."
Has there been a case like this before such that you can point to precedent? No. But the law is the words themselves, not just how they have been applied in the past.
The victim got out of the car, stopping the suicide attempt. She talked him back into the car so he would complete it. I have no problem fitting her actions into the statute as written.
Kevin, I understand where you are coming from and am happy we can disagree without launching into invective. You're picking up the first round of drinks! Grats.
My disagreement rests on not accepting the Bully Narrative. She initially spent at least one month trying to talk him out of it. Reading between the lines of what little information we have, I think their relationship was more complicated. I think it's likely that what looks like bullying is simply her keeping a promise to him to not let him chicken out this time around.
She was also suicidal, although it took a bit of research to sleuth that out. So this could lean in the direction of a suicide pact - we both want to leave this world, it's a commonality that started this friendship, you keep talking about ending it but are afraid to take that final step and you want me to help you "jump".
Same way I pushed you off the high-dive at the pool, same way you grasped my wrist and made me ride the tripld loop rollercoaster. You WANTED to dive off the highest board, I WANTED to ride that rollercoaster. We just needed each other to backstop the other so we wouldn't keep chickening out.
What I would really like to see is his texts to her before she responded "get back in the truck". Did he say "I changed my mind I don't want to die" or did he say "I changed my mind, I want do this with pills or a razor". To me, that is the difference between bullying him or helping him.
Despite our disagreement, do you see how very odd it is that his last text is not reported? Is it somewhere and I've just missed it? Because it's weird that we are told of his last action and her text, but nothing about the last text he sent to her.
If you can find it I'd appreciate that. Because it's absence in the 4 articles I've tracked down is suspicious. Almost as if something narrative-busting is being kept from us.
Thanks Fen.
It wasn't a last text, they talked on the phone after he'd started his suicide attempt and walked away.
Phone records show he called and talked to Carter twice, each time for roughly 45 minutes.
Police discovered his body the next day.
In a subsequent text message to another friend, Carter recalled feeling guilty for Roy’s death, and acknowledged pressuring him to get back in the truck after he out upon realizing the carbon monoxide was “working.”
“His death is my fault,” she said. “Like, honestly I could have stopped it. I was the one on the phone with him and he got out of the car because [it] was working and he got scared and I f[—]en told him to get back in … because I knew that he would do it all over again the next day and I couldnt have him live the way he was living anymore.”
Almost as if something narrative-busting is being kept from us.
The more we dig into things we know about, the more we realize what sanitized and clipped versions we get most of the time. Our media is not there to inform us. It is there to give us a facsimile of the news so we feel "informed" while cutting and shaving the information to create clickable and relatable stories for their chosen audiences.
If I didn't live in Boston where this is a local story being covered somewhat in depth by the Globe, I would likely come to different conclusions.
I'm posting the the larger texts and information at Ann's other link for your reading pleasure.
and am happy we can disagree without launching into invective.
As it should always be so, Fen. As it should always be so. :-)
Inga said...
Yeah, yeah, your nagging grows tiresome too, Prole.
6/16/17, 11:36 PM
That's twice today we've agreed and on the same thread! Keep it up and you and I are going to have to f***. I hope you're worth it. :-)
But yeah, I really see no upside in letting this woman roll around alive and free. Do we really want more of this? Does anyone remember that, what was it, some kids talked a Down syndrome boy into dumping urine on himself or lighting himself on fire or something horrible like that?
Seriously, she's a witch, burn her. You say that's ridiculous but that's because we don't believe in witches. If you actually find an actual witch, you should actually burn her.
Kevin "the more we dig into things we know about-"
Yup. Murry-Gellman Amnesia Effect. Preaching to the choir.
Stay frosty!
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