In landmark case, woman found guilty of manslaughter for her texts
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I fucking told him to get back in [...] because I knew he would do it all over again the next day and I couldnt have him live the way he was living anymore I couldnt do it I wouldnt let him
That doesn't excuse or justify her behavior. The correct thing to do would be to "get him help" if that was within her power. But sometimes there is a thin line between stalker and boyfriend, especially in online relationships. And she was just 17.
No, that is not what I am suggesting.
and got her to believe that strengthening his will to die is all she can do for him.
This is in line with what I am saying. It is common for men to insist some woman is somehow responsible for his (emotional) welfare because he is romantically interested in her. All of society tends to reinforce this idea. It can be incredibly hard for a woman to find a way to effectively tell a man "This it not my problem to solve. You need to handle it. It is your life." Even if she has that kind of clarity, everyone around her may act like, no, his welfare and emotional state is your responsibility.
She may have been in a no win situation. If she had told him "Get lost. I can't deal with this." and he committed suicide and left some suicide note blaming her for failing to love him, maybe she wouldn't be literally facing jail time, but many people would still hold her morally responsible for a thing she may have had no real control over.
These type situations can be incredibly hard to sort out and courts have a long history of, for example, giving men who finally beat their abused wife to death less jail time than abused wives who kill their husband in self defense. And I think we, as a society, aren't going to come up with good answers without acknowledging these larger patterns and how they place an undue psychological burden on young women.
To be fair... she didn't found that person she was that person girl friend.
I think they both had mess up mind and it's better if she were to be sentence to rehabilitate.
1, It's different because she wasn't physically present, which is new in the eyes of the law. Unlike your bridge comparison.
2, If I wrote a book trying to convince people to kill themselves would I now be liable?
Any lawyers here who could explain the details of how they satisfied the elements required to prove involuntary manslaughter?
Think of it as her spending years convincing her boyfriend to kill a third person. She'd be just as guilty.
I'd have charged her for complicity and conspiracy for first degree murder.
>> Someone was killed as a result of the defendant's actions.
The victim got out of the car and only got back in because the defendant told him to.
>> The act either was inherently dangerous to others or done with reckless disregard for human life.
She may not have intended to kill him but given she knew of the poor mental state he was in, plus the fact he had just backed out of killing himself, it seems reckless to then tell him to get back into the car.
>> The defendant knew or should have known his or her conduct was a threat to the lives of others.
As above really.
Would you mind explaining this further? I'm not sure I understand your position from your comments.
1) How can we prevent this from happening again?
2) What kind of relief will this provide to the relatives?
3) How will it help rehabilitate the girl herself, so that her future contributions are positive and not even more negative?
4) What was or would have been best for the victim?
5) Who else is responsible for the situation?
6) What was the true causes that led to the death?
And I don't feel like this case is answering any of these questions, trying to prevent recurrences, or support the people who are affected by the event. It's almost too complicated an issue, with too many layers and levels of indirection, reliability and blame. If we truly want to address the root cause, we'll need something much more thorough.
At this point, I feel it probably will only work as a scape goat, allowing relatives to believe the boy had no issue, and that he would have managed to overcome and live a happy life if it wasn't for her, taking some of their guilt away and towards her. Are they right, we'll never know, but for sure other people could be argued to have also indirectly contributed to involuntary manslaughter, people who might have played a role with the original causes of depression and suicidal thoughts that led to him engaging in such a relationship in the first place and triggered the events that followed.
I think that would satisfy the victims relatives to some degree. As for the 'true causes that led the the death' that seems pretty obvious to me from the facts - she was the cause. He had stepped off the ledge so to speak and if she hadn't intervened and told him to get back in the car it's likely he wouldn't have died that day. When considering her guilt that's all that matters. Why the victim was suicidal in the first place is irrelevant to establishing her part in the incident.
From the ruling, it seems the judge did not take anything into consideration except for the messages and inactions directly related to the incident. I understand why he didn't, legally speaking, because it's way too complicated if you do so. How can you reason about 2 years of exchanges in which he clearly expresses suicidal thoughts and toys with the idea of death to a teenage girl who herself struggles with these same issues and is under active antidepressants?
I don't feel like it's obvious at all what the true cause is. She's spent more time and sent him more messages trying to deter him from committing suicide and pushing him to seek help prior to her assisting in his suicide attempt. Yet it seems that didn't do anything to help his depression. In his suicide note he thank her for all her support, and for being there for him and helping him. To me, him being suicidal is at the heart of it. She didn't make him suicidal. And if we could find who or what is responsible for him being suicidal in the first place, then wouldn't those who or what be even more responsible for his death?
You could also claim he's made her assist him. He basically spent 2 years promoting to her the idea that he should do it, actively seeking her support in it. To me, that's as far fetched as what she's accused of. As soon as you make a conclusion from the premise that your words were the cause of someone's elses actions, you enter a realm of uncertainty, because we don't understand those psychological mechanism at all. They run deep, wide and complex.
Yes, she's assisted him in his suicide, that's undeniable, to call that involuntary manslaughter is questionable. Suicide is illegal, and that's questionable too. Assisted suicide is also illegal, that's also questionable. The grounds for crime are fuzzy, but you're right, given the law and situation, she contributed, at least by making it easier for him.
So I'm not objecting with the ruling, or anything like that. I feel more like we're just failing as a whole. Failing to prevent depression, failing to support it, failing to discuss it openly, failing to deal with it, failing to understand it, etc. And I don't see this court case improving on any of it. In fact, it might make it worse, by complicating an already complicated situation.
FWIW, the law seems to be against her in this case: the court ruling quotes a precedent where people were sentenced for playing Russian roulette because one of them died. I think it's idiotic but that's what there is.
The vast majority of suicide attempts are caused by temporary, immediate stressors that recede with the oassage of time. 70% of people who commit suicide do so within an hour of of making the decision. 90% of people who survive suicide attempts do not try it again.[1] It is an overwhelmingly impulsive act when people, caught up in the emotion of a major crisis, cannot see any path forward.[1]
I'm not sure if this is the legacy of religiosity, but modern attitudes towards suicide are clinically shaped that understand the fleeting nature and temporary sway of many suicide crises. You present a romanticized view of it(a sober, rational decision made over a period of time, perhaps due to a legacy of classic greek philosophers, that is inaccurate and dangerous. I say this as someone who had a friend commit suicide in 8th grade in a typical dad pushes son too hard academically and athleticly, son feels depressed, finds dad's gun and ends life scenario. He couldnt see the options in front of him... running away, seek emancipation, put up with shit for another 4 years before finally telling his family to frak off...
Public suicide should be illegal for the often melodramatic way in which they choose to end their life and the extreme trauma that witnesses suffer. Watching someone as they jump off a bridge/building, splatter on the sidewalk, or blowing their brains out leaves scars no amount of therapy can heal.
[1] New England Journal of Medicine - Guns and Suicide Rates in US => http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp0805923#t=article
The court ruling in this case cites a precedent involving somebody handing a loaded gun to a person who said in an impulse that she wants to kill herself and then actually did and another case when people were sentenced for playing Russian roulette until somebody "lost". FWIW, I agree with the first case but the second one is stretching it IMO.
Ultimately, you can't really disagree that most of the time, people generally want others to live, whether they like it or not.
This girl sounds like a psychopath. Gender stereotypes keep a lot of people from seeing it. Reverse the genders in your mind.
Unlikely, even if it you managed to get superheated water into a cup would would instantly flash into steam under standard pressure if you disturbed it. You wouldn't have a chance to hand it to the customer.
That's why you want to be very careful if your water still doesn't boil after you've microwaved it for the 3rd time. It may very well have become superheated, which you will find out as soon as you try to do anything with it, even moving the container can cause instant trouble.
Yes, I assumed that a paper cup and coffee solids will provide nucleation points.
And the incident was about a coffee spill, not a flash boiling of superheated liquid.
> During the case, Liebeck's attorneys discovered that McDonald's required franchisees to hold coffee at 180–190 °F (82–88 °C).
This is clearly not superheated liquid.
http://www.accuratebuilding.com/services/legal/charts/hot_wa...
And considering you're strapped into a seat you are going to be exposed a lot longer than you'd otherwise be if you could jump away or have some other reflex act to make things better. First panic, then remove seatbelt, open door, get out. By the time that's all done you are probably 6 seconds (or longer, for an older person) in contact with the water, depending on the size of the cup that might as well be an eternity.
The burn I have is pretty extensive, it is so deep that there is no pigmentation on the burned parts and EMTs would not believe it is just a water burn.
Now, I have done something like that in front of medical personnel in an ER, pulling my pants off when I realized they were the source of the exposure that was causing my throat to close up. Even I would probably hesitate to do so in the middle of a McDonald's knowing that I would likely be charged with something for suddenly getting naked in public. If the maneuver was successful in protecting against burns, good luck convincing people that you had to get naked to prevent being maimed. This woman WAS maimed and her case still gets dismissed in internet comments left and right, like yours.
I was dismissing the claim that this was "PWR core" hot water, which would be > 100°C. Selling superheated liquids would indeed be grossly negligent because they can flash-boil just by handling them. Merely hot water on the other hand does not pose that particular risk.
That is not what you are doing. Given context, the effect of your comments comes across as dismissive of the case.
This is what I think I did.
> but (affirm that the lady was in fact seriously injured)
Something feels wrong about this supposed requirement. I just stated facts. I don't want to insert disclaimers, signalling, agreement or something like that on the surrounding issue. It strikes me as a crazy social ritual.
Note that I have nowhere made a statement on the case in general.
You aren't required to do anything in particular. But telling me I am wrong to explain to you how you are coming across is... all kinds of tunnel vision, at best. This is how it looks to me as a minimum. You don't have to care how it looks to me, but you can't tell me I am wrong in my assessment of how it appears to me.
And I think I am done with this apparently completely pointless discussion with you.
Now you're being silly. If you checked that link I posted below then you'd see that there is hardly any difference in damage done with 100 versus 88 degree Celsius water at the same exposure times. Both are pretty much instantaneous and will give you 3rd degree burns in a matter of seconds.
That is conditional on spilling. With superheated water that's not necessary. That's my point. Superheated water provides a far worse risk profile since it can flash boil on you and delid the container even if you handled the container properly.
So equating 82–88°C coffee to PWR water is vastly overstating the risk.
Or watch the 80's movie Heathers
Yes, the burns were serious. Educators have latched on to this example to argue that it wasn't frivolous.
>The Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) recommends a range of 175° to 180°F (80° - 85°C) for holding and a serving temperature range of 155° to 175°F (70° - 80°C).
McDonalds was holding their coffee at 180-190, just slightly hotter. You're getting a beverage produced by pouring near-boiling water over coffee beans. It's going to be dangerous. Maybe don't order it at a drive-through.
If I recall things correctly, the woman who was burned was older, with thinner skin in the region where she was burned.
Furthermore, the cup the coffee was served in was, at the time, made of styrofoam. To say they are a bit pliable without a lid is an understatement.
So the woman was served the hot coffee in a pliable cup, with a lid - which gave it a margin of structural integrity. Then, doing something she had likely done many times before, she wanted to take the lid off of the cup. Why? I don't honestly know, but likely to add some cream or sugar would be my guess. Apparently though, she needed both hands for this, and did what she likely did in the past:
She placed the coffee between her legs, likely to grip it, so she could remove the lid. At which point, the cup collapsed (because it was now a pliable styrofoam cup without a lid, so its structural integrity was lost), spilling the hot contents on her legs and other nearby regions, and burning her severely.
This is what I recall from the case and time period. This write-up appears to support that recollection:
https://www.caoc.org/?pg=facts
Apparently, based on the above, she was also wearing sweatpants (known for absorbing liquid, as they are designed for this), and was a passenger in the vehicle (so was likely handed the cup by the driver passing it over).
Maybe don't sell it at a drive through.
The case was remarkable in part because McDonalds knew that a certain percentage of customers would be severely injured, they worked out the percentages and assumed it would be ok.
McDonalds in fact at the time required coffee to be served at 188-90 degrees F (88 degrees C), which will scald in 3-5 seconds; most coffee shops serve it at 140 degrees F (60 degrees C) which increases burn time to 20 seconds.
In fact, the attorneys found that McDonalds knew about this problem already and over 500 people had been scalded already; they had paid out $500,000 in the year of the case alone.
Anyway I hope all the people commenting here don't support the right to die, because these kinds of rulings make it much harder for a doctor to ever have the ability to advise a patient about suicide.
And all the person in the example did was yell "Fire!".
> We can't even definitively say it was bad advice, maybe committing suicide was indeed the best option for him.
I will push back against this very strongly. This isn't someone with a terminal illness looking to end things free of pain. People with clinical depression have a mental illness, their suicidal actions are the product of a condition they have no control over. Their feelings are not the product of reason and rational thought, it's a disease.
> these kinds of rulings make it much harder for a doctor to ever have the ability to advise a patient about suicide.
No they do not. This is why we have specific legislation allowing doctors to discuss end of life options. It explicitly exempts them from prosecution like this.
My overall point is I think it is absurd to punish somebody for giving advice that you think is bad. The girl was in no position of power over the boy (as a doctor or lawyer might be). She gave her unbiased opinion the matter. And this is a crime somehow. Makes one very weary of what can be said.
This girl wasn't just giving advice. When he was committing suicide, he got cold feet and got out of the truck. She texted him "get back in the truck." That's not giving advice or her opinion by any stretch of the imagination; that's giving a command to someone in a very fragile mental state, and it's obvious based on the context what that command would lead to.
> Makes one very weary of what can be said.
Unless your words will directly and obviously lead to harm, you don't have to. And if you think your words might do that, well then you probably should choose your words carefully.
Legal experts say the decision could have national implications as courts grapple with how to apply long-standing laws as technological changes have taken interactions online.
I think this is a thing that very much needs to be grappled with. People often say that online communications don't really count, it isn't the same as meatspace. And yet people can get jobs, create companies with long distance cofounders, meet future spouses etc etc online. People seem to say "It doesn't really count" when they are doing something shitty they wouldn't do in person. These same people often laud kindness that occurs in cyberspace or that happens because of connections made that way.
This case is saying it still counts. I am fine with that having a potential chilling effect on shitty behavior generally that occurs online, on the phone, etc.
Freedom of speech doesn't mean you can't commit a crime by using speech. Plenty of crimes involve speech, like fraud. Most relevantly, encouragement of a crime has long made someone an accomplice in a crime.
If you talk someone into murdering someone else, you will rightfully get convicted. Here, just change someone else to themselves.
The crime isn't the speech. The crime is him killing himself. How she brought it about doesn't really matter. That's why the first amendment isn't strongly implicated here.
Though the first amendment would likely protect someone who said "killself nerd" if the person actually did it. In that situation there is no intent for the person to actually kill them self.
Reminiscent of a case from years ago where roommates secretly filmed a roommate having a gay encounter, and the roommate killed himself on finding out. I don't get how a person committing suicide in a non-intoxicated state is anybody's fault but their own.
I guess you could argue if you find a drunk person and tell them to do something reckless, but none of these cases seem to fit that.
"My friend asked for a heart transplant. Never-mind that I'm not a doctor, I did the surgery anyway. Not my fault I have a corpse on my dinner table."
I feel strongly that nonconsensual sexual filming of people where they have an expectation of privacy ought to be an offence.
Anyway, it's a great argument for using something like Signal with expiring messages on.
Up. To. Pretty sure her age (and other factors) will be taken into account when a sentence is passed.
That's not saying she's not guilty or making excuses for her.
Suffice to say that it is likely that she is still on some kind of medication for something, so who knows if that (if true) played a part in how she reacted during the trial - or if how she acted when she committed her acts was caused in part or whole by the medication she was taking at the time.
Likely, it was/is a combination of the medication, whatever her problems are/were to take such medication, combined with other possibly sociopathy (or "psychosis" as you termed it), possible immaturity at the time (and perhaps now), along with a host of other possible reasons.
That's not what psychosis is. People with psychosis are mostly not violent. Did you mean psychopathy?
A child of 18 years of age?...
> Especially in a society in which 3/4 of the people believe that there is a "better life" after death.
What a stupid remark.
That is something systematically taught by people holding positions of authority over children (in most cases both parents and school teachers).
In light of that, it is not that surprising so many people young see suicide a respite.
Like facilitating your boyfriend's suicide even when he was reluctant to? Really? If that's the argument you're going to make, then we might as well throw out all those cases where the high school football team gangraped someone. After all, they were just silly little children.