Michelle Carter — convicted of manslaughter for texting encouragement to a young man who was killing himself — petitions the U.S. Supreme Court to take her case, based on her right to freedom of speech.

WaPo reports. Also happening at the same time: a new HBO documentary, "I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth v. Michelle Carter." And click my "Michelle Carter" tag. I opposed prosecuting Carter from the beginning.

From the WaPo article:

The two teenagers barely interacted in person. They led separate lives, both beset by difficulty, in separate Massachusetts towns. But they developed an intense online bond after meeting in Naples, Fla., in 2012, when each was visiting relatives. They traded stories of their anguish, and Carter recommended that Roy seek treatment for his depression. Soon, however, she began suggesting ways for her interlocutor to die by suicide, which he had previously attempted...

The day before he was found lifeless in his truck, she had pressed him to follow through on his plans. “If you want it as bad as you say you do, its time to do it today,” she said in a text message the day before his death. “I love you,” she told him repeatedly, and he returned the words. As his truck filled with fumes and he stepped outside, apparently having second thoughts, she instructed him to return to the vehicle, according to the juvenile court judge who convicted her of involuntary manslaughter in a nonjury trial in 2017. The judge, Lawrence Moniz of Bristol County, reasoned that her “virtual presence” made her responsible for her boyfriend’s death. He later handed her a 15-month jail term.

Her conviction was upheld in February by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which said it “rejected the defendant’s claim that her words to the victim, without any physical act on her part and even without her physical presence at the scene, could not constitute wanton or reckless conduct sufficient to support a charge of manslaughter.”

Here's something I wrote back in June 2017:

In recent decades, there has been some evolution toward making it legal to assist in a suicide, but in the U.S., this is only for medical professionals helping somebody who's dying. But I've seen cases outside of the United States where physicians have performed euthanasia on individuals who are severely depressed and want to die. That is, they are suicidal. In Belgium, this might be considered enlightened and respectful of individual autonomy. I don't like that, but what if a person is close to a someone who is suicidal and comes to believe that they genuinely want to die and is convinced it's their choice and offers moral support and encouragement? You don't need to agree with the autonomy idea to want to refrain from criminally punishing somebody like Michelle Carter who speaks in accordance with that idea.

There's too much danger of selective prosecution, going after the people who seem awful, and too much power put in the hands of suicidal people to wreak harm on others, finally going through with a suicide after someone who's making them angry lets slip with some text daring them to stop talking about it and do it already.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court will review the case of Michelle Carter, convicted of involuntary manslaughter for texting encouragement to a man who committed suicide.

The Boston Herald reports:

“Carter is the first defendant to have been convicted of killing a person who took his own life, even though she neither provided the fatal means nor was present when the suicide occurred,” Carter’s attorneys wrote....

Carter’s lawyers urged the SJC to take the case because, they contend, convicting someone of involuntary manslaughter for encouraging another person to commit suicide “with words alone” violates the First and Fifth Amendments.

I objected to the prosecution in a number of posts, including this one:

There's too much danger of selective prosecution, going after the people who seem awful, and too much power put in the hands of suicidal people to wreak harm on others, finally going through with a suicide after someone who's making them angry lets slip with some text daring them to stop talking about it and do it already.

"It’s wrong to deny compassion to someone so troubled that they’d attempt suicide, but we can’t move so far in the other direction..."

"... that we race to find who’s 'really' to blame when a person voluntarily takes their own life. It’s still an act of self-murder, and while Carter undoubtedly played a persuasive role, I can’t imagine where we will draw the line.... [T]he law can’t and shouldn’t try to right every wrong. Michelle Carter should go free."

Writes David French.

I have 5 observations:

1. Where do we draw the line at making arguments that the law can't do something because where would we draw the line?

2. Isn't it odd that in one day we see a young woman convicted for expressing herself in words alone, with no physical actions, and an old man let off the hook* where there was physical action but incompletely understood expression? It shows we care about the mind, and yet, legally, we probably also believe that no one should be punished for their thoughts, even when the thoughts are openly expressed.

3. Why couldn't Michelle Carter's crime be understood as abetting the self-murder committed by Conrad Roy or a conspiracy with Roy to murder Roy? That would make sense to me. But we don't usually want to think about suicide as self-murder, since we feel sorry for the victim. One answer is: There's no statute making suicide a crime. But up until fairly recently, there was statutory law making suicide a felony in the United States.

4. In recent decades, there has been some evolution toward making it legal to assist in a suicide, but in the U.S., this is only for medical professionals helping somebody who's dying. But I've seen cases outside of the United States where physicians have performed euthanasia on individuals who are severely depressed and want to die. That is, they are suicidal. In Belgium, this might be considered enlightened and respectful of individual autonomy. I don't like that, but what if a person is close to a someone who is suicidal and comes to believe that they genuinely want to die and is convinced it's their choice and offers moral support and encouragement? You don't need to agree with the autonomy idea to want to refrain from criminally punishing somebody like Michelle Carter who speaks in accordance with that idea.

5. There's too much danger of selective prosecution, going after the people who seem awful, and too much power put in the hands of suicidal people to wreak harm on others, finally going through with a suicide after someone who's making them angry lets slip with some text daring them to stop talking about it and do it already.

___________________

* [ADDED] I'm seeing the news that prosecutors say they will retry Bill Cosby.

"He breaks that chain of self-causation by exiting the vehicle. He takes himself out of that toxic environment that it has become."

"She instructed Mr. Roy to get back into the truck, well knowing his ambiguities, his fears, his concerns. 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."

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....

Free Michelle Carter.

This is a ridiculous prosecution.

"It is a slippery slope if the government is now going to prosecute people under a manslaughter — a 20-year felony charge — for not preventing those who want to commit suicide..."

"... and that’s what they’re trying to do here."

Asked if they thought [17-year-old Michelle] Carter’s messages convinced [18-year-old Conrad] Roy to kill himself, his grandfather Conrad Roy Sr. said, “Her texts had a big influence on what happened.”