I don’t see that nitpicking language makes any difference in this debate.
So morons are not protected by some aspects of the law, but smart people should be? Huh.
It seems Massachusetts still relies on the common law solicitation to felony, but has proposed a statute to formalize the law and impose stricter penalties. Under the proposed statute, I could see my SO being convicted:
“Whoever solicits, counsels, advises, or otherwise entices another to commit a crime that may be punished by imprisonment in the state prison and who intends that the person, in fact, commit or procure the commitment of the crime alleged shall, except as otherwise provided, be punished as follows:”
Sure seems like she would be trying to solicit or entice me to commit a crime. Do you disagree?
It doesn’t really matter since fraud doesn’t have anything to do with this case. It’s only part of this thread for two reasons. 1)I asked if any fraud charges could be brought up against her for deleting all her text messages and sending new ones in an attempt to cover up what had been going on. Maybe fraud wasn’t the right word, in which case someone could have simply said no and told me why. 2)Manson took off on, what is essentially a tangent that has nothing to do with this case, asking if texting someone 1000 times asking them for $1000 and them giving it to you is fraud.
As far as her being sincere. You can be sincere and still be wrong. She may have really and truly felt that he really wanted to die because he was in so much pain. But it’s not her call to make, furthermore, it’s not like she just texted him ‘well, I guess if that’s what you want’ and that was it. It was hundreds of text messages. When he was in the process of dying he called her and while on the phone he got out of the car twice because he was scared and she convinced him to get back in. She said to a friend that she knew she could have stopped him and she was probably going to end up in jail.
But, again, if she really is sincere, then she’s a threat to the public and needs to not be around them anymore. In fact, her own defense team argued that her psychological condition caused her to think that he would be better off dead and that what she’s doing isn’t illegal and in fact, helpful. Taken at face value, that’s not someone I want driving next to me, becoming a doctor or teacher, working around teens in any capacity etc. Especially since she’s already proven that she can [help] take a life.
Some of the ones I listed, of course. Like genocide and espionage. Which you deleted. But the reason I used those examples is that Manson doesn’t seem to believe that people can be manipulated except by threat of violence. I used examples of people being convinced to do something without the threat of violence. That’s it.
My meta-objection was based primarily on my seeking to get someone to explain their views more fully, and looking forward to the substance of that response, and getting a really lame response that just seemed like trying to score a debate point than flesh out the issue.
I am not saying she is guilty of fraud. My point of bringing up fraud is that it is an offense that, in some respects, penalizes speech when there is a certain corrupt intent. to the extent that someone argues that mere words cannot be illegal, I point to fraud as a widely supported law that penalizes just that sort of thing.
But I don’t believe her intent was corrupt. I believe it was quite pure. And that is the key point I am making.
I understand exactly what you are saying, but I flatly disagree. You say it isn’t her call to make. I think she has a right to have that opinion and express it as she wishes, since, as I say, it was not a “corrupt” opinion, with her engaging in duplicity or misdirection, but simply an expression of her sincere belief. Whatever she did to cover up afterwards is beside the point. For decades gay people covered up their “crimes”, which were in fact legally crimes at the time, to avoid being imprisoned. It doesn’t mean it was right to arrest and imprison people for sodomy. In this case, she knew she might get in trouble with the law, and she was right. That doesn’t mean it is ethically justified for the justice system to take this tack.
Fundamentally it comes down to what I have said over and over. Every person has the right to choose suicide. And everyone has the right to counsel others as to whether they should or should not assert that right.* You may think it’s morally wrong for anyone to ever say, perhaps outside of extreme cases of physical illness, that it would be a good idea to go through with it. But I don’t believe it is a crime to have a different opinion and express it.
*If it is widely known that the only opinion someone is legally allowed to express is not to do it, why would any expression of that belief be taken seriously by a suicidal person? They would know it is just what someone has to say to cover their ass.
ETA: It also bothers me that a private form of communication between two people using a phone is used against someone in court when two people who are not suspected terrorists or mobsters would never have their voice calls recorded.
Did any of them convince their partners to kill themselves so they could start an annual softball game in their memory, just for the attention?
Was sodomy illegal because they were killing people? No, it was made illegal nearly a thousand years ago because it was deemed immoral and some locales still hasn’t taken it off the books …because they still consider it immoral or unnatural.
I’m not sure how you’d like to compare a 1000 year old law banning anal sex to sending text messages to a suicidal teen in a Kmart parking lot with his pick up truck filling up with exhaust telling him he has to stay in the truck.
One is basically ‘what you two are doing isn’t hurting anyone, but I don’t want to see it, off to jail with the two of you’. The other is ‘what you two are doing resulted in one of you being dead, off to jail with the other one’. Over simplification, yes, but I hope you can see the difference.
Was there any voice recordings? All I’ve seen are texts and I read in one of the articles that the were also facebook messages.
These were likely all accessible on his phone or computer which were probably taken or handed over willingly by his parents during the investigation. I’d also be willing to bet (but it’s just a guess) that all the texts and facebook messages (as well as emails) were probably guarded by no more than the screen lock, if that (in other words, facebook was logged in, email client didn’t require a password, instant messages are right there for all to see etc). They may very well have gotten a warrant for any electronic devices she had and probably phone records for both of them.
Where does it stop? What if she continued to find kids just barely hanging on and pushing them off? At no point would you consider her a threat to the public?
TLDR, it wasn’t an accident. She wanted him to die. He died. She should be punished.
You know, the more I think about this case the more it bothers me.
The young man had apparently been talking about suicide for a very long time. He was socially isolated, and seemed to have no other friends than her. She didn’t even seem to want to be dating him. My sense is that she was put under a level of pressure that no one that age could have withstood.
Now, both of them should have reached out for help. Parents, counselors, teachers, all were available to both young people.
And both of them should have used the “block” function on their phones. She did not have to be tied to a sad sack who constantly brought her down and threatened to kill himself, and he did not have to stay in touch with someone who finally broke down and encouraged him to do it.
But, having experienced a man who did this sort of thing, I can understand how the pressure and emotional abuse could have led her to finally say “OK, so do it already!” He was miserable, nonstop for how long? Years, I think it was, or maybe months, but that’s a long time at their age.
In my case, I just asked him out to dinner one night and afterward drove him straight to Walter Reed (he was a veteran.) I stayed long enough to make sure the doctors knew he was a danger to himself and then I left him in their care. But I had a car, and his vet status, and knowledge of the system, etc. She had no personal resources to deal with this.
Maybe she just finally got to the point of wanting him out of his misery. . . and hers.
I’m not saying it’s OK, but maybe it’s a bit more understandable than I thought at first glance. Maybe she was just desperate to be free of the emotional abuse.
No one seems to be digging in to this part of the story, but there are hints that he’d been in the cycle a very long time. Where the $&^% were his parents?!?
Yes, we know. You don’t care about this man’s preventable death. The only thing that concerns you is this woman’s right to express her opinion. The consequences don’t matter.
She performed an act led to this man’s death. If she had not performed that act, he would be alive. She also intended for the man to die. She performed an act with intent of killing an innocent person, and, without her act, he would still be alive. She cannot claim self-defense. She is a murderer. Full stop.
I may honestly want someone to die. That doesn’t mean I have the right to commit any action that actually leads to their death. This woman may have honestly wanted this man to die, but she cannot legally or morally perform an action that leads to his death.
You are fighting for a freedom that there is absolutely no good consequence in existing. And, that’s the only non-woo based argument for morality–what produces the best consequences. Having people be allowed to compel a mentally ill person into killing themselves is not useful to society.
And you need to realize that there is a difference between a right to die and suicidal depression. The depression made this man want to kill himself. He did not rationally choose to kill himself. I know–I have a mental disorder. I know how they work. My OCD wants me to do things I don’t want to do.
This is not a woman who expressed her opinion to agree with a rational person that the correct action would be to kill himself. This is a woman who yelled at the man to get back in the car when she knew him doing so would kill him. She knew he was in a compromised mental state. And she intended for him to die because of what she said.
This woman killed this man. His depression helped, but she pulled the trigger.
The death penalty is too good for this woman. And you want to let her go free to kill again.
Kind of hard to agree that the girl was bullying the guy if we don’t agree on what “bullying” entails.
If there was such a law, then yes I agree, that charges could be brought for violating THAT law. If while robbing the 7-11 you killed the store manager, I wouldn’t agree that she should be charged with murder.
I have tried to stick to using the term “manipulate” to describe what I think the girl did to the boy. To the extent I may have used the term “bully” it was probably to avoid repeating the same word over and over. Wherever I used the term “bully” in my posts, read that as “manipulate.” Does that clear things up?
Well, it would seem like a textbook application of felony murder. But if you don’t agree with that crime, I get it. But a law to charge my SO with murder (with possible death penalty applying in some states) is most certainly on the books.
The problem in this case is that, in the US at least, rights tend to be framed as absolutes. This creates conceptual difficulties in explaining how to employ exceptions.
Sure, if free speech is legally absolute, what this woman did was reprehensible but cannot be made criminal.
However, outside of the US, rights tend not to be framed as absolutes, but as subject to some sort of interest balancing exercise.
Of course, practically speaking, rights aren’t actually treated as absolutes in the US either … the activities which are the exception to whatever right is simply deemed to exist outside of the protected sphere (as in ‘obscene speech isn’t protected speech’ via the Miller Test). This is a more awkward way of getting to the same place … those who advocate for absolute rights find mechanisms like the Miller Test for obscenity make no sense; those who advocate for non-absolute rights point to various cases where speech is in fact criminal (conspiracy, treason, obscenity, fraud, harassment, etc. … and now this).
That is what these debates tend to come down to - another round of ‘this right ought to be absolute, and if you allow exceptions, they will eventually undermine the right itself’ versus ‘no, making exceptions makes sense, and this is one of those cases’.
You’re really side tracking this discussion. Personally, I was having an interesting discussion with Slacker, even if we were at a total disagreement. You, OTOH, have spent the entire thread trying to set up some kind of gotcha that has nothing at all to do with anything. If it has something to do with this thread, why don’t you just ask the question that you want the answer to instead of whatever the hell you’re doing that requires you to keep changing your question.
Your line of questioning started out with sending a thousand texts requesting a thousand dollars and turned into killing a 7-11 employee to get laid. It also started out with you asking about fraud, which had nothing to do with anything.
So, again, are you going somewhere with this, could you get there faster?
To be even fairer, near the very beginning, I was the first person in the thread to mention fraud when I asked if she could be charged with fraud for deleting the texts and sending new ones to make it appear as if she never had any knowledge of what had been going on. It was probably the wrong word, and also moot since I don’t think my use of the word sparked the discussion, but I’m putting it out there anyways.
Mason is attempting to create something of a strawman out you asking about fraud and me suggesting she’s a bully. But he’s been trying to intertwine them for 3 days without getting to the point.
Wow. I have no problem with her being found guilty, but I’m also okay with the length of the sentence. I’m not generally a fan of the death penalty for anyone, but if I was, there is no way I would support it for this crime. I haven’t followed closely, but I find it hard to believe she’ll do this again.
I don’t think I’d want something as harsh as the death penalty for her either. IMO, when I think of how she should be punished, I think of some kind of HOC time and then a long term probation where she would have to meet with a PO and a psychiatrist until she is deemed to not be a threat to the public anymore. Probably also, as I mentioned above, some kind of a restriction as to who she’s allowed to be around, at least professionally. So maybe she shouldn’t be a soccer coach or doctor or teacher etc.
I’d also like a PO and or psychiatrist to make sure she isn’t allowed (as best as they can) to be in a relationship with anyone that she could so easily take advantage of again…however that would work out.
She did not perform the act that led to his death, he did. She is guilty in some jurisdictions of failing to call 911 and send help, but that apparently is not a law where this happened.
I’m not so sure she wasn’t defending herself. It wasn’t a physical threat, but he definitely was holding her life hostage emotionally.
She in no way compelled him to do it. He had choices, and she encouraged him in one of those choices. He gave her every reason to believe it was what he really wanted to do, and that he would be miserable until he stopped “chickening out” and just did it. As the above quote shows, she also had a mental illness, and was not (legally) a woman, but a minor at the time all this occurred.
You state both that the depression made him want to kill himself, but that she is responsible for him doing it. She did not pull the trigger. Every physical act taken to kill this boy was taken by him and nobody else. Including the equally relentless and burdensome acts of haranguing this mentally ill girl with his misery and wish to die.
I think all the arguments in this thread get off track because we are failing to separate the moral from the legal points and conclusions.
Morally: What she did was reprehensible. But I find it interesting that in your view, his every action is excused by his mental illness, but hers excuses her of nothing. His misery absolves him, but hers is irrelevant. What if she had written a suicide note saying that she couldn’t bear his misery any more, and she would show him how easy it is to end it?
He could have stopped talking to her at any time, but he didn’t. He could have reached out for help, but he didn’t. He could have chosen healthier friends, but he didn’t. He kept going back and lamenting his inability to complete the act.
If you have OCD then you know that only your own effort can change your outlook and approach. At some level you have to choose to combat or acquiesce to the unwanted thoughts/actions. Others can encourage or discourage, but they can’t ultimately decide for you.
The boy made his own decision to use suicide to solve his problems, and also to keep communicating with someone who would push him to do it. It especially bothers me to hear his parents say they are happy with her conviction.
Legally: I find it appalling that she was found guilty. What she did was speech, not murder. It wasn’t even constructive murder, or manslaughter.
If she is responsible, how much more so are his parents? They ARE legally responsible for their son’s well being. They DID know that he was depressed and fail to get him help. If that’s not criminal neglect, then what is?!?
You mean like how he enrolled in college and got his maritime captain’s license? He may have been suicidal, but things were looking up, she just kept pushing him back down.
You can’t say all this:
And also this:
That is, you can’t say that she played no part in his death because she, physically, had nothing to do with it. But also say that it was self defense because she was being emotional abused. One of those lines is bullshit.
If she played no part in his death because she didn’t have anything to do with it physically, then you can’t go on about emotional abuse.
If she killed him to defend herself from his emotional abuse, then anyone can just as easily claim that he was murdered due to her emotional abuse.
They are not mutually exclusive, because in no way am I ever saying she killed him. He killed him.
Her actions are taken in defending herself from emotional abuse, just as his actions are taken in the attempt to end his depressive torment. They are both trying to end their own misery, using methods driven by their mental illness rather than any healthy, constructive decision-making.
My argument is that if it excuses one, it excuses the other.
And that the people who should be held responsible for failing to help are the healthy people who are actually legally responsible for the well-being of these two sick kids. Not the sick kids themselves.
The focus on achievement is a classic example of this kind of parenting. He managed to fill out an application, and to learn some rules and pass a test. What has that to do with being happy and healthy? Many a high-achieving person has committed suicide, and achieved despite grinding misery. (There are those who argue that if Lincoln had been happy, we’d be two separate nations now.)
OK, let’s suppose it was more than he could have done a year before, and so indicates improvement. Does it not also indicate improvement while all these thousands of texts were occurring? Does it not support the theory that he was perfectly capable of taking the actions encouraged by his parents over those encouraged by this girl?