Suicide by text: Verdict walks a fine line
Experts debate morality vs. legality
The day after a juvenile court judge in Massachusetts convicted Michelle Carter of killing boyfriend Conrad Roy III with her words, some legal and technology experts cautioned that the punishment may not fit the crime.
“I draw a line between moral and legal implications of what she did,” says Daniel Medwed, professor of law and criminal justice at Northeastern University school of law.
“In terms of morality, what she did is despicable. But that doesn’t constitute manslaughter, and that’s the problem.”
Carter and Roy were teenagers when Roy, 18, took his own life in 2014 by pumping his truck cab full of carbon monoxide. During their relationship, which started in 2012, the two had traded texts in which Carter urged Roy to kill himself.
“The time is right and you’re ready, you just need to do it!” Carter wrote in one message.
In reaching his verdict Friday, Judge Lawrence Moniz focused on Carter’s text message to a friend after Roy’s death.
In that text, she confessed to persuading Roy to return to his truck after he had stepped out. “Get back in,” Carter told Roy, according to the friend, who testified in court.
Tellingly, Moniz said, Carter “did not issue a simple additional instruction: Get out of the truck.”
Experts said that in this potentially groundbreaking case, the letter of the law is being stretched.
“It’s true, her words caused great harm, but they didn’t kill this young man. He chose to
kill himself,” said Mary Anne Franks, a professor at the University of Miami school of law and vice president of the Cyber Rights Initiative.
“Clearly, this verdict reflects the outrage of a community,” she said. “But there’s a saying in law: Hard cases sometimes make bad law. That’s true here.”
WHAT’S AT ISSUE
Cyber bullying has become an increasingly dangerous byproduct of the social media revolution.
Although many states have laws on the books aimed directly at those who abuse social platforms to harm others, Carter’s case was tried in a state that “does not have a stand-alone crime on the books for encouraging suicide,” Franks said.
In Massachusetts, a charge of involuntary manslaughter can be brought when one person causes the death of another person by engaging in behavior that is considered reckless enough to cause harm.
A law against encouraging suicide would have made the case more straightforward, Medwed says.
Carter could face as many as 20 years in jail. “If there had been a specific law, she might have even pled guilty,” Franks said.
WHAT’S AT STAKE
Though societal outrage over Carter’s role in Roy’s suicide is understandable, if the verdict stands, “the concern is that it could send a message to prosecutors to pursue cases like this,” Medwed said. “As lawyers, that makes us concerned the law is being stretched.”
He said that in theory, a friend who simply expresses sympathy for a despondent friend’s desire to take his or her own life could soon be held liable for that death. “There’s still a big societal debate going on about assisted suicide,” he said. “This sort of verdict would imply that anyone being sympathetic to a loved one could be at fault.”
Franks said the positive takeaway should be “being more careful about what you say, which is not a bad thing, but we need to be concerned with the justice in this case. She’s being held accountable as if this were a homicide.”
WHAT’S NEXT
Carter has a chance of reversing the decision on appeal, which could lead to a retrial, depending on what prosecutors decide.
Franks and Medwed anticipate that appeal and suggested defense attorneys would focus on the “element of causation” and try to decouple Carter’s comments to Roy from his decision to get back into the truck.
“There are strong grounds for appeal,” Medwed said.
Franks said, “Maybe one byproduct of this case will be that the (Massachusetts) Legislature will decide that they, too, need a law specific to the crime of encouraging suicide.”
Regardless of what happens, Franks argued that society should take a hard look at itself and revisit the way people interact. There’s evidence that some of that is taking place on social media, where Twitter erupted with reactions to the verdict.
Most hued either toward approval (“SO glad Michelle Carter was found guilty. Can’t believe there are some people who believe she did nothing wrong,” tweeted @hey_christinaxo) to concern about its implications (“Michelle Carter is without question a vile human being, but the legal precedent being set here makes me deeply uncomfortable,” said @chrisberez).