Michelle Carter guilty of manslaughter in texting suicide case | Hacker News Reader

Michelle Carter guilty of manslaughter in texting suicide case

cnn.com

7 pointsgeetfun6 comments

The charge of involuntary manslaughter seems odd; it was deliberate action, sustained over an extended period of time so not an act in the heat of the moment, with the clear and unmistakable intent of causing death which did lead to death.

If suicide doesn't break the legal chain of causation (which was a necessary legal theory for even a involuntary manslaughter charge and conviction), then it seems to be clear-cut first-degree murder.

She was on suicide pills (so-called antidepressants) herself, but they didn't mention this until the last paragraph:

> Earlier in the trial, a psychiatrist testified that Carter was delusional after becoming "involuntarily intoxicated" by antidepressants. She was "unable to form intent" after switching to a new prescription drug months before Roy's suicide, and she even texted his phone for weeks after he died, the psychiatrist testified.

Other sites say that she was switched to celexa. The safest ant-depressants are the MAOIs. Last time I looked at Wikipedia's article, it said this class had been unfairly maligned.

Interesting verdict.

How does this apply to a large group of people posting on someone's FB wall, or DMing them on Twitter, telling them to kill themselves?

Is everyone that sends a message or a post guilty?

What I find disturbing about the verdict is this: If the person found guilty of manslaughter then goes and commits suicide citing, in a suicide letter, that the words of the judge made her do it, would the judge be guilty?

Now, I know that lawyers protect their own and the judge might make the defence that the above argument is too far of a leap, but one could have argued the same for the initial verdict that just by the mere suggestion and lack of action one should be responsive for someone else's action.

It wasn't "mere suggestion".

She told this guy to kill himself repeatedly. She encouraged him to do it. She badgered him about it. After he did it, she didn't call the police to ask them to try to save him. She wanted him dead.

The judge did not tell this woman to kill herself, so your hypothetical situation isn't the same thing. There is no slippery slope here. Freedom of speech does not extend to harmful speech. It is similarly not legal to tell people to go out and commit acts of violence.

This is not some new precedent really. There are pretty well defined exceptions to free speech and this falls far on the side of illegal speech. In specific this was speech explicitly inciting violence with a clear and present danger of succeeding.

This has already been established by previous cases. The only thing that was argued was whether her speech had a reasonable chance of inciting him to kill himself, which was proven in court by the prosecution.

Other than this, the trial is a textbook case of manslaughter similar to asking someone to light themselves on fire or inciting a riot.

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