Guilty! Ground breaking verdict texting suicide

Good. I fully support this verdict.

It's the right verdict, I think.

I've been following the case and am quite happy with the verdict.

I'm glad that judge went through with this verdict. People need to understand that actions have consequences.

Is there no difference between physically pushing him back into the truck and texting him to say get back in the truck?

My aspect of this is how we view suicide. I go deeper into this. She obviously was very intimately wrapped up in his suicide desire. Think about it. They HAD to have discussed it. But just how much and to what depth?

I see her giving him support on something he desperately wanted. It's just a taboo topic and involves death so we don't look at it very open minded.

After all she didn't push him in the truck. He got back in on his own.

This verdict is dangerous. It means words are equal to actions. But they are far from it.

I see this as another heart string emotional judgement call. Based on fear.

Put it like that, I agree.

I don't know how I feel about the verdict, but I think suicide being taboo is irrelevant. In the United States, suicide is frowned upon regardless of how or why the suicide occurred.

Whether or not words and actions should be held to the same account I do not know, but if nothing else I think this verdict sends the message that words can and often do have dire consequences.

Is someone tripping a child walking down the school hallway worse than someone telling the child online they'll push them so hard their skull will bleed?

The girl from the case wasn't just participating in her boyfriend's ruminations on suicide, she wanted him to commit suicide. She wanted him to die.

I dont think the precedent this verdict has set will add to stigmas about suicide, but pronounce that words should sometimes be judged as harshly as actions. Right now, I don't think that's bad. The way we use words has changed bc of social media.

She was guilty of not acting to help him when she was acutely aware that he was actively attempting (and succeeding since she did not intervene) suicide. Beyond that, not only did she NOT attempt to help him she participated in the act by encouraging him.

When someone attempts suicide with the express intent of killing themselves they just do it, they don't reach out to somebody. This kid had to be talked BACK INTO HIS VEHICLE when he changed his mind. He didn't want to die, he desperately wanted help but didn't know how or where to get it. So he made the ultimate plea, an attempt at suicide. Instead of calling the authorities she nudged him onwards and forwards.

If he were standing on a bridge and she was standing there with him yelling "JUMP!!" over and over, would you feel any different?

words can be very dangerous

that is why there are people in prison for their online bullying activities

I think it is a very good thing that courts throughout the world are catching up to the dangers of what happens online

My guess is that the actual punishment will reflect that. Sometimes words can be as deadly as something phydical. Sometimes it is easier to fight a physical threat.

This is what makes her guilty. When he exited the truck, she basically ordered him to get back in. She could have at that time told him, maybe now was not the time, maybe he still had more things he wanted to do in life. Instead, she acted the bully.

Me, too. How cruel to goad a person to suicide.

I'm with Krumple and the ACLU. I think this is a terrible decision, and opens the door for an expansion of prosecution and persecution based on speech alone.

Although I think this young woman was as mentally and emotionally troubled as the young man who took his life, I can understand why some would consider what she did to be terrible, but to repeat, he took his life, she didn't.

The notion that she somehow forced him back into the truck with words alone is, in my opinion, a distortion of reality intended to facilitate a very harsh response to a behavior that is not illegal but, understandably, considered to be unconscionable.

If a governmental representative(s) of MA citizens wants to create a law that specifically prohibits people from encouraging suicide, it should be drafted, passed in the legislature and then tested in court. Instead the judge manipulated an existing statute that was never intended to address this situation, so that it could be applied to behavior he and a great many people think is reprehensible.

There is no way of knowing if the three words "Get back in" somehow overrode the young man's instinct for survival (and if it did, was someone just convicted for the crime of mind control?) or even had any influence on his decision to go through with the suicide. If the process of him getting out of the truck and her telling him to get back in had been repeated multiple times, I still wouldn't agree the verdict was correct, but at least there would have been more evidence to support the notion that he didn't really want to take his life and would not have, but for her "commands."

She was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and the judge relied on a finding that the three words constituted the ‘‘wanton and reckless conduct’’ required by the statute. In announcing his verdict he revealed his true belief that this wasn't ‘‘wanton and reckless conduct," and she wasn't guilty of involuntary manslaughter, she was guilty of at least voluntary manslaughter and perhaps first degree murder. How can encouraging someone to kill themselves, in the manner in which Carter did, be seen as anything but her intending to influence him to go through with his suicide plan and die? That her encouragement had been going on for some time and carried through to the day he killed himself, hardly suggests a spontaneous action. There is no reason to believe she wasn't deadly serious in her encouraging him to kill himself so how could it have been wanton or reckless conduct?

There may be, but I don't believe there are any Massachusetts statutes that impose a duty, the breach of which would subject a person to criminal penalties, on anyone to either not encourage someone else to kill themselves or to intervene in a suicide attempt. If there were, this case would be far less controversial. Again, the MA legislature can create such a statute if they deem it to be in the best interest of Mass. citizens. They did not and I'm sure this incident was not the first time anyone in MA thought about the responsibility of someone encouraging suicide or not preventing it.

I would like to read or hear the full text of the judge's ruling, as I can't understand why he wouldn't have taken Roy's prior suicide attempts into consideration. He seems to have found that the three words "Get back in" were more the cause of Roy's death than the young man's expressed desire to kill himself, his setting up a means to do so, and his utilizing those means that ultimately did kill him.

Doesn't anyone else find it difficult to reconcile the assumption that Roy, despite all of his statements and his prior suicide attempts, really wanted to live and would have, if not for the compulsion driven by three words from Carter? Doesn't the difficulty in reconciling these two things create at least a reasonable doubt about her guilt, even if you can get past the misapplication of the statute?

I can easily imagine why the parents of this young man would prefer to think that their son died because of the actions of someone else, and not because, for whatever reason, he wanted to die and leave heartbroken loved ones behind. As noted, I can also imagine why people might see Carter as a some cruel creature without a soul or conscience and wish to inflict punishment on her, but our criminal justice system is based on codified law, not simply the sense of people or judges as to what is right and wrong, and who should be punished for the latter.

These cases also don't stand alone as judicial islands, affecting only the people who have specifically been involved in them. A judge's decision establishes precedent which in turn makes similar decisions easier for other judges to make in different cases involving different people. Decisions that break new legal ground are a big deal because they can and often do lead to decisions other judges would not have made without the precedent established by the ground breaking judge. When a decision is based on very clear and specific statutory language that matches the case's fact pattern very closely, the impact of the precedent established will be very limited and thus, far less perilous if it is a flawed stone upon which other judges may construct their own wide ranging decisions. Appeals are heard almost as much for the desire to eliminate precedent that is seen as flawed and dangerous, as the need to see justice served in a given case. This decision will be appealed for both reasons and my hope and prediction is that it will be overturned

You don't tell somebody with a history of mental illness, someone that has previously attempted (and failed) suicide to kill themselves over and over and over. Her conduct in the situation was very much wanton and reckless. She didn't accidentally send ALL those text messages telling this kid to kill himself.

Totally agree, It's a rational verdict.

There are limits to Freedom of Speech such as yelling fire in a crowded public area.

Here is a list according to the US Courts:

http://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/educational-resources/about-educational-outreach/activity-resources/what-does

Freedom of speech does not include the right:
• To incite actions that would harm others (e.g., “[S]hout[ing] ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.”).
Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919).
• To make or distribute obscene materials.
Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476 (1957).
• To burn draft cards as an anti-war protest.
United States v. O’Brien, 391 U.S. 367 (1968).
• To permit students to print articles in a school newspaper over the objections of the school administration.
Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, 484 U.S. 260 (1988).
• Of students to make an obscene speech at a school-sponsored event.
Bethel School District #43 v. Fraser, 478 U.S. 675 (1986).
• Of students to advocate illegal drug use at a school-sponsored event.
Morse v. Frederick, __ U.S. __ (2007).


This may fall under the first item.
• To incite actions that would harm others

Her words certainly seemed to incite an action that harmed another.

Also wondering if you would feel differently if she was physically there yelling at him to get back in the car - using the same words but was physically there?

I think the use of texting and not physically being there has lead to some people not truly feeling they are actively participating or it removes them emotionally from the situation. In others words it almost isn't real to them. In a sense why cyperbullying seems so much easier - you are not actually seeing the person so it makes it more impersonal.

This isn't an excuse just maybe an understanding of why someone could do something like this....or maybe she just has no heart or caring.

I agree that no one should, but just because something is seen as reprehensible or morally wrong, doesn't necessarily make it illegal. I keep coming back to this because of it's importance: The Massachusetts legislature could have made this behavior illegal, but it didn't. If the general consensus in Massachusetts (including the legislature) was that existing laws that cover "murder" (in all of it's legal variations) also covered Carter's conduct, the case would not be controversial nor be receiving national attention, so an argument that the legislature has believed that this behavior is illegal, but didn't write a statute specifically outlawing it because they believed that existing, broader statutes that made it illegal sufficiently addressed it, doesn't hold water.

I've no idea if her defense included this in their case or even considered doing so, but based on what I know of the facts of the case, it doesn't appear that Carter was urging Roy to go through with suicide out of malice or because she might somehow profit from it. Unless there was evidence of the motivation driving her intentions (statements to others, diary entries, tweets etc) than her being a psychotic who simply enjoyed feeling like she exercised the power of life or death over Roy is only one possibility and no more certain than the possibility that she deeply loved him, saw suicide as his only means of salvation from suffering and therefore urged him to go through with it.

I doubt the defense went down this path because it would be admitting that she wanted to see him dead and tried to make sure it happened. They seem to have preferred the argument that whatever influence she may have exerted was immaterial since Roy was bound and determined to kill himself. If so, this seems, to me, to have been unwise, because it created a burden of proof for them, and simply because Roy had attempted suicide in the past didn't mean his death by suicide was inevitable. In any case the judge said he wouldn't take the prior attempts into consideration as a matter of law and so the argument was DOA.

Better, I think, to leave the burden of proof to the prosecution, and I wonder how the judge thought they had proven that Carter's three words, and not the intentional actions of Roy caused his death.

BTW: Would your opinion of Carter's conduct be different if there was no evidence of Roy ever being diagnosed and treated for mental illness? Is the contemplation of suicide, itself, a sign of mental illness?



That was my point too and yet she was convicted of involuntary manslaughter.

"Wanton and reckless" conduct is said to exhibit a high level of disregard for the consequences of your actions. This is not the same thing as intending to cause those consequences and I agree that it's reasonable to conclude that she intended for him to go through with the suicide.

I'm not knowledgeable enough about criminal law to know if this is the case as respects that body of law, but in civil law I know that, at least in some jurisdictions, conduct can be so wanton and reckless that intent is implied. However, it doesn't look like the judge based his decision, wholly or in part, on this, regardless of whether or not he could, because he wanted to remain within the confines of the statute upon which he based his conviction.

This, to me, seems to be a case where the judge, like many commenting in this thread, was shocked and morally repulsed by Carter's conduct, and felt it essential that such conduct not go unpunished, and that society issue the statement that there are consequences for a total lack of circumspection relative to speech. He may say he didn't take anything into consideration but her three crucial words, but I think that's disingenuous. If the evidence of her continuously urging, if not badgering, Roy to go through with his expressed plan didn't exist and serve to set the scene for the day of his death, a) She most likely would never have been charged, and b) If she had, it's very unlikely that any judge, including this one, would have convicted her.

Virtually everyone arguing that the decision was just points to the totality of her conduct, not just three word: "Get back in." If she had never used those words or replaced them with something like "C'mon babe, you know you want to do this!" I don't believe that she would seem to be any less of a horrible person to those who now deem or as such, and, more importantly, I think the judge would have found another way to convict her.

This is not the way the law is supposed to work and it's a bad precedent.

Yes there are however in such cases not only must intent be proven, but the likeliness of the intended consequences.

You can harangue a two year old all day; every day with the intent that when he grows up he will eventually harm or kill someone, but I very much doubt that you would be even charged with inciting violence, let alone convicted. (Child abuse perhaps but incitement to violence, no)

I've agreed that it was her intent to persuade him to go through with his suicide. I don't agree that the intent was likely enough to have succeeded (or that it's even been proven that it did succeed.) to establish an incitement case. Regardless, the judge didn't find her guilty of incitement.



No. Unless she coerced him back into the car either physically or through a threat such as "I'll kill your mother if you don't get back into that car."



I agree completely, and maybe if Carter had always been face to face with Roy when she urged him to go through with suicide, she might have thought better of doing so, but I don't think her physical proximity to Roy makes a difference in terms of determining guilt.




Or maybe she truly cared for Roy and truly thought that ending his life was the right answer for him. I'm not, at all, suggesting this is the case, and I don't know enough about the facts to argue one way or the other, but unless there is evidence (of which I'm not aware) that she had no feelings for him at all, and was as likely to berate him as persuade, (Which may very well be the case - I just don't know), I'm surprised by what seems to a solid consensus here that her conduct was at least heartless and at worst evil. Am I missing some important facts?

In any case, the state of heartlessness is not illegal, nor are the acts of heartless people unless they violate a criminal statute.

Agreed. I also support the verdict.