But then I started thinking: If a married woman told her secret lover: “You should kill my husband so we can be together” And then Loverboy does indeed kill her husband, shouldn’t she have at least some culpability?
The answer I kept coming up with is yes.
I think once you’ve become intimate with someone on that level. You have more influence over that person (it works both ways actually) than most do. And with that influence come a certain amount of responsibility.
This was essentially the scenario that the prosecution outlined in the Pamela Smart case back in 1990. She was convicted of “being an accomplice to first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and witness tampering.” (from Wikipedia)
The weird thing about that case is that Mrs. Smart is serving a life sentence without parole while the actual perpetrators are all out of jail now, including the one who pulled the trigger.
My understanding is that she, too, has extensive documented psychiatric problems. She apparently spent the first part of their relationship attempting to get him to seek help; after a long period of refusal on his part to do so she decided – perhaps influenced by a change of medication for her – that he may have been correct that his unhappiness was of sufficient magnitude and permanence that he was better off dead. If she was totally convinced of this then “get back in the car” becomes not defensible exactly but might make a kind of heat-of-the-moment sense. He’d made his decision and backing out would only prolong his suffering.
I don’t know what the right outcome is here. It may well be true that involuntary manslaughter is the proper verdict. But there’s enough nuance that I’m uncomfortable with a blanket condemnation of this young woman as a monster. He was sick; but she was sick too.
Yeah, but in that case – and in this one! – the whole point seems to be that death is the intentional result, right? And, likewise, if you tell me to murder your spouse, and add that you’ll give me a briefcase full of money in exchange for doing so, then as I understand it you can of course be prosecuted for the intended killing.
But, as I understand it, this woman got convicted for involuntary manslaughter, even though the statute says it has to be a killing that was unintentionally caused as a result of her behavior. How does that make sense, if the killing was intentional?
I wonder if she’d have had better luck had she not waived a jury trial. I’m not convinced you could get 12 people to agree on the involuntary manslaughter charge.
I’ve never met a person who didn’t read their text messages the moment they had a chance to. I’ve actually admired the severe restraint a friend of mine has shown by not interrupting our board games in the middle of a turn when the table his phone’s on starts vibrating.
Thus it seems pretty specious to me to defend the situation by suggesting he could merely have ignored his phone. That’s like saying it should be okay to poison all the food in somebody’s fridge purely on the logic that nobody’s forcing them to not eat out all the time.
Sometimes people say things that they don’t mean, out of frustration, anger, and insanity. While, I will grant, she probably did mean it in some way, it’s probably also fair to say that she’d simply met her limit and handled the situation poorly. She isn’t a mastermind serial killer talking random people into taking their own lives. She’s a crazy girl who could barely handle her own issues let alone her boyfriends.
Sentencing her to better mental care probably makes more sense than sentencing her to hard time. Though, some community service probably wouldn’t hurt, just to make clear to her subconscious that she could have been hit harder and needs to get out in front of her own mind sometimes.
In such cases, is the person liable for a “conspiracy to commit murder” or some similar charge, where the law specifically outlaws encouraging someone to commit a crime, or are the actions of the actor being (legally) ascribed to the influencer?
This is certainly the wrong verdict. It may or may not be manslaughter: I could be persuaded either way on that. But whatever it was, it was definitely voluntary: She knew that him getting back into the truck would result in his death, and knowing that deliberately took actions to get him to get back in.
It is even worse than that. She helped him plan the details of his suicide. She also told him to delete her text messages before he died and then she listened on the phone until she was sure he was dead and still didn’t tell anyone. It took over a day for someone to find him dead in his truck in a parking lot 40 miles away from home.
No she was on her cell phone when she told him" to get back in " She said she could hear him cough and crying out in pain on his last breath . She did
nothing to stop this from happening she knew where the truck was and could had call 911 or the boys parents . :mad: Yes it’s is very tragic that she had so much
influence over the young man . It said on the link I posted that she told a friend she was on the phone when he dies .
"TAUNTON, MA (WHDH) - TAUNTON, Mass. (WHDH/AP) – A friend of a woman charged with using text messages to encourage her boyfriend to kill himself said in court the woman told her, “It’s my fault.”
Michelle Carter is charged with manslaughter in the July 2014 death of 18-year-old Conrad Roy III, who died of carbon monoxide poisoning in his pickup. Carter was 17 at the time.
RELATED: Teen in texting suicide case wanted attention, prosecutor says
Samantha Boardman was one of several of Carter’s friends who testified Wednesday.
Prosecutors say Carter sent text messages to Boardman saying, “I could have stopped him but I told him to get back in the car.”
Two other friends say Carter texted them saying she was on the phone with Roy as he died.
Ally Eithier told the court that Carter was not a friend, but that she began texting her and said that her boyfriend was going through a tough time and that he had killed himself.
RELATED: Woman in texting suicide case waives right to jury trial
“I was on the phone talking to him when he killed himself. I heard him dying,” Carter allegedly said in a text message to Ethier."
I agree with you on this and this is way I was so surprise she was found guilty especially in my state , Massachusetts . This is going to appeal by woman lawyers
so it really not over yet . I was hoping she would be found guilty so the boy’s family would get some justice . This is such a tragic case .
On the other hand, 12 normal people looking at her behavior are going to be so horrified that they’ll look for some way to punish her, regardless of the law.
Yeah, you can hope for that one hold out and a hung jury, but that’s a big roll of the dice.
You’re assuming a rational mind. Not to say that you’re not correct, but your expectations for the priority ordering of someone under deep stress is out of alignment with the concept of “guilt”. While I have not met this particular girl, I think it’s safe to say that her principal instinct was for self-preservation not for murder.
Think of it like two people, a man and a woman, standing on the top of a tall column, with barely enough room for them to both stay back-to-back together. He loses his balance temporarily, almost falling off and almost pushing her off. She panics and pushes back, knocking him off entirely. Is that a problem of her killing him, or more a problem of the situation that the two are in?
William Flynn and Patrick Randall were both found guilty of 2nd degree murder and sentenced to life in prison with parole possible after 40 years with reduction for good behavior (and a 3 year sentence reduction). Both were released in 2015 after serving 25 years.
Vance Lattimer received a sentence of life in prison with parole possible after 30 years. His sentence was also reduced by 3 years and he was paroled in 2005.
Raymond Fowler was sentenced to 30 years, eligible for parole after 15. He was released, violated his parole, went back in and was released again in 2005.
AFAIK they all served their sentences at either Maine State Prison or New Hampshire State Prison for Men.
All this is tangential to the OP, tho. I only brought the case up to illustrate that arguments such as those put forth by Grrr! have a solid basis in reality.