Definitions for manslaughter differ from one jurisdiction to the next. I couldn’t find statutes for MA through Google, but the link in the post just above yours contained this:
There wasn’t a killing of a person by another, so if the above info is correct, no kind of manslaughter took place.
Then the charges would have been dismissed before trial. What is required is a killing. The woman chose trial by judge. The judge knows the law better than any of us. He found her guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Except, in Massachusetts, “Involuntary manslaughter” specifically requires not “a killing” but “an unlawful killing”.
How exactly was this killing “unlawful”?
Here’s a link to the requirements in Massachusetts as I already posted.
I’m curious about the about the use of the term “involuntary” to describe this kind of offense. Wouldn’t “voluntary” be more appropriate? She didn’t accidentally or mistakenly coax Roy into killing himself, and it’s abundantly clear she intended for him to die. What about any of this is involuntary?
Which shows how shady the whole thing is. “She did something that’s not really illegal, but the public is outraged and howling for us to nail her for something, but they probably don’t want it to be the same penalty as for stabbing someone eighty times while they plead for mercy, so let’s just find a lesser crime in the same general neighborhood and shoehorn it in.” Welcome to kangaroo court. :dubious:
Was your father suicidal? Then that is a mental illness, and killing someone with a mental illness who wants to die without trying other options is indeed murder. The person cannot consent due to the mental illness.
Doing it to yourself would be murder, except that same mental illness means you are not fully in control of your actions. And thus you are not guilty by means of insanity.
Suicide is wrong unless it is the last option available. If you don’t believe that, then, if you get depressed, you will have no reason not to kill yourself. That makes society worse.
Bullshit. There is no civil liberty to cause the death of another person. What you are doing is deliberately reframing everything so that what the woman did was not actually reprehensible, acting as if she just said something mean.
If you think something is reprehensible, then it can’t be defended. But you are defending all over the place. You have created this idea that she actually thought that suicide was the best way for him. You have moved the goalposts to claim that this is about what she thinks, rather than what she did.
She manipulated a mentally ill person who was not in complete control of himself into killing himself. She wanted him dead, and her actions directly led to his death. If not for her deliberate actions in trying to cause his death, this man could very well be alive today, getting treatment.
Reprehensible means worthy of punishment. It is an easy word to say, like you did in your hypothetical. But you don’t really mean it. It’s hyperbole.
Don’t you believe that the judge that allowed this case to go forward would understand the law better than any of us?
Perhaps it was her wanton and reckless behavior that made the killing unlawful? If, for example, she let her pit bull out in the neighborhood and it attacked and killed an infant. She didn’t kill the infant but her reckless behavior caused it.
No. You are flat out wrong. The OED entry is short and to the point: “deserving censure and condemnation”. If you want to call those social punishments, fine. But neither involves forcible imprisonment. Note also that the root of the word “reprehensible” is a Latin word meaning “rebuke”.
You didn’t comment on my Macy’s thought experiment. Do you not find that action reprehensible? I do. But it’s obviously not illegal.
And if the appeals court overturns this decision, you’ll be back in this thread patiently explaining that those folks know the law better than him, right?
I think you could be misinterpreting the word “killing”. I don’t know that it’s necessary for a defendant to actually kill someone in the physical sense. Obviously, that’s probably how it happens in 99.5% - 99.9% of all involuntary manslaughter cases. But we’re dealing with a highly unique situation in which someone’s conduct, though not physically responsible for someone’s death, incontrovertibly factored in the death of the victim – even her defenders cannot really dispute that fact.
You would have found the Massachusetts statute law on punishment for manslaughter, but no definition of the elements of manslaughter, let alone involuntary manslaughter. That means that the law did exist but was not in statute law. Welcome to common law, in which law is “found” by judges who either apply the law set out by higher level judges (stare decisis), and/or apply the precedents of other courts’ decisions on similar legal and/or factual matters. To find precedents or summaries based on precedents, look in law texts, law journals, legal data bases, models used when dealing with similar matters, and legal information websites.
In the matter at hand, you’ll find that Boston’s Coconut Grove fire WELANSKY, COMMONWEALTH vs., 316 Mass. 383 is a leading case on involuntary manslaughter, worth reading not only for its application to the Carter matter, but also for the pending Oakland artist colony fire matters. Further digging about in case law will show how a leading case is interpreted in various other cases, so see if the the facts and/or ratio of any of those cases could be applied to the matter at hand.
For a quick overview of the elements of an offence, see if there is a model jury instruction on point http://www.mass.gov/courts/docs/press/murder-instructions.pdf, and for a quick overview of the elements of an offence plus insights into how they apply to a set of facts, see if a leading case or the matter at hand has posted grand jury decisions Commonwealth v. Carter :: 2016 :: Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Decisions :: Massachusetts Case Law :: Massachusetts Law :: US Law :: Justia (for folks wondering just what transpired in the conversation between the two, and the context of it, this is an excellent resource, but remember that it is just a Grand Jury decision, not the court’s decision after a testing of the facts and the law at trial).
Major correction to that last post of mine – civil decision, not grand jury decision. One hell of a big difference. :smack: Look at the civil decision for a background on the facts and context, not for the criminal law.
I’m not a lawyer so this isn’t a legal opinion, but if you knew that Madsircool was suggestible enough to follow your instruction and kill her/himself, then I see culpability there. Morally, at least, you would not be off the hook.
It’s n the same realm as letting a friend borrow your car, knowing full well they are too drunk to drive safely. Would you expect to be held accountable for this?
On what legal grounds could the decision be overturned? The AC wont overturn because it didn’t agree with the verdict.
It’s my opinion that – as a matter of law – an element of involuntary manslaughter in Massachusetts is that the killing is unintentional. And, as far as I can tell, the judge made clear in his remarks that he found her guilty because Carter instructed Roy with full knowledge of the entirety of the situation.
Imagine somebody gets convicted of petit larceny, and the judge patiently explains while reading that verdict into the record that the defendant of course didn’t actually steal anything while committing aggravated assault. Should that get overturned?
Her conduct led directly to the young mans death. She was reckless in that she several times encouraged him to climb back into his CO filled truck when he would have otherwise not done so. She did not intentionally set out to kill him but her wanton actions directly led to his death. I don’t see the misunderstanding here.
Do you believe she intended for him to die?
I am not the person your question is directed to but absolutely. That is not in dispute. She wanted him dead so that she could use it to gain friends and sympathy for herself.
But again, there is–and should be–a large subset of actions that are immoral by most people’s reckoning, but not illegal. Or should we go back to prosecuting people for stuff like adultery? I think not.
You’re right, it is oddly direct when one person speaking in Town A causes another person to die in Town B. That does not make it simple.