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Post by al on Feb 9, 2019 15:03:44 GMT 10
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Post by Deleted on Feb 10, 2019 2:36:43 GMT 10
No to both questions. If someone is determined enough, they will kill themselves no matter what.
And since she wasn't there at the time, how can she be convicted? After all, he killed himself, Michelle didn't.
And our actions should not even be considered in court as it could lead to more surveillance and creation of a police state. They are also open to misinterpretation.
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Post by SharksFan99 on Feb 11, 2019 16:30:30 GMT 10
Yes, absolutely. The girl may have had good intentions at the beginning, but she encouraged him to take his own life on several occasions. I mean, just take a look at these quotes:
Imagine how his poor parents/family must feel reading those comments; they're sickening. I actually think the sentencing of 1.5 years is too light.
In any case, I do think that our actions on the internet should hold weight in a court of law. The internet is a vital source of communicating with others and we use it several times a day.
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Post by Telso on Feb 11, 2019 23:31:11 GMT 10
Having people around you not even daring to help you in a hopeless situation is already bad enough, but straight up encouraging is nothing but highly malicious and toxic behavior and should definitely be punished.
SharksFan99 likes this
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Post by Deleted on Feb 12, 2019 10:57:05 GMT 10
It's a bit of slippery slope. Someone can verbally encourage someone to kill themselves, but what of a boss or teacher that yells at someone so harshly that the person kills themselves? What about suicide notes where the victim explicitely lists the people and the actions they did that drove them to suicide? The latter types are arguably more liable than the former, yet it would be impossible to prosecute the latter. To what degree are other people criminally responsible for someone taking their own life? IMO it's ultimately a personal decision, and while people can certainly be held socially responsible, being legally and criminally responsibile is a whole other can of worms that we are probably better off not opening.
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Post by al on Feb 15, 2019 14:45:44 GMT 10
I haven't made up my mind on this personally, as it really forces moral ambiguity. Of course what she did was horrible and malicious, but was it illegal? I'm not sure whether this violates her first amendment rights. I'm not sure whether it's truly manslaughter to assist one in suicide at all, albeit sketchy. Similarly to doctors administering euthanasia, are you responding to their expressed desires, or are you manipulating an unwell person? In most cases, it seems to be a little bit of both. Not everyone believes the choice to die is an immoral or unwell one, and then again you may have unwell people themselves sympathizing with others who make that choice.
As crude as this is going to sound, she was very unlucky in getting caught. Had this happened on a more secure platform, by voice, in person, nobody else would have probably even known about this conversation. Which begs the question of how often similar exchanges go on. Yes being his girlfriend made it particularly heinous, but deep in the rabbit hole of cyber bullying, there are a lot of scary things. I've been told to kill myself by people I know in real life via the internet, and I've seen it said to plenty of other people. If the receiver of such a comment, or even extreme bullying in general, actually commits suicide, could it, or should it fall back on their tormentors? It's a tough question to answer and absolutely makes this a slippery slope.
Beyond just those who encourage self-harm, what about those who do nothing to stop it? This is a very common position to be in, and a very uncomfortable one at that. Somebody could just not seem right, they could casually mention their plans for later, and you could be unsure of their seriousness. What does one do, report it? Could that infringe on their privacy, if their life wasn't actually in danger? I speak from personal experience, as I have been texting, been on call, trying to talk people out of it, but it genuinely scares me to think, "What if it happened, and what if I didn't do enough?" Of course this is deviating from the issue, it's a whole other thing for a person to actively encourage it. But still, it does beg the question of whether we are on watch for each other and could be held accountable for their actions.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 17, 2019 21:56:44 GMT 10
From a lawyer's point of view, the degree of murder/manslaughter depends in part on the perpetrator's state of mind.
NOTE: This is NOT legal advice, just an opinion based on minimal research and what I remember from law school. This opinion does not create an attorney-client relationship and I cannot and will not represent anyone who acts in reliance of what I say here (and in all likelihood, I'm not licensed in your state anyway). If you need legal advice, please contact an attorney directly.
In criminal law parlance, a state of mind measures the degree to which the criminal defendant acted in order to bring about the predictable result. Encouraging someone to take their life and then that victim committing suicide, I think, may qualify as recklessness as to whether what they are saying would result in the other person dying. The recklessness state of mind (or, mens rea) in many states is sufficient to call a death an involuntary manslaughter. On a side note, the courts have already brought down a clear decision in People v Kevorkian that assisted suicide is considered second-degree murder, which is quite a few steps up from "mere" manslaughter.
I do believe that simply failing to intervene when someone threatens suicide is a bridge too far, and does not quite meet the required state of mind (unless you're a psychiatric professional or something, maybe that would be criminal negligence or something, which is a state of mind one degree below recklessness). This girl actively goaded him into committing suicide; that's quite a bit more than failing to call for help and demonstrates a more malicious intent.
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