Teen charged with encouraging boyfriend's suicide

Damn, she could sell ad space on her forehead to pay for her legal bills.

 

No quotes from SJ.com in that article?

 

Massachusetts? She's a WITCH!!!!

 

Daily Mail photo cutline:

Carter, a high school senior who's on the honor role, has been charged as a youthful offender, which means her case is open and she could face punishment as an adult if convicted

Always love those kinds of typos. Only thing better is when you're trying to correct someone else's error and you make a mistake yourself.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...d-Roy-III-kill-threaten-it.html#ixzz3kP7vC8wh

 

How do you go from charging her for goading him on to its being involuntary?

 

Has anyone gotten the local bar owner's take yet?

 

It's silly. I've some other instances where "involuntary manslaughter" is used as some sort of catch-all homicide offense. A Chicago judge ended such a trial recently, before the defense could even present, because of it.

 

Got an email from our son's new principal. It contained one sentence and used "are" instead of "our." A little disconcerting.

 

Are principals in the union too?

 

My guess is that the prosecutors' theory is that her texts amounted to criminal negligence. It would be a way to get around the "mens rea" - or guilty mind - requirement of voluntary manslaughter. I could see an argument that by sending those texts to someone who she knew to already be contemplating suicide that she behaved in such a manner it amounts to criminal negligence, which would open the door for involuntary manslaughter. They can't get to voluntary manslaughter or some higher homicide because she didn't have any intent to physically harm him - her intent was to convince him to harm himself. With involuntary manslaughter they don't have to prove that she intended to harm him. Instead they would have to show that she owed him a duty as his girlfriend to try to intervene and instead did the opposite.

There's another way to prove involuntary manslaughter and that is that a defendant committed an unlawful act that one could reasonably expect would result in the loss of life. Before states made specific crimes for drunk driving that results in death, people would be prosecuted for manslaughter under this theory. You drive drunk, that's illegal, and you could reasonably expect that your behavior would result in death, so you're guilty of involuntary manslaughter. Here the argument would be that her illegal act would be the aiding and abetting suicide or accessory before the fact to suicide. But apparently they didn't charge her with those crimes separately - and in my jurisdiction you couldn't do the unlawful act version of involuntary manslaughter without charging the predicate unlawful act.

Anyway, that's how you can get to a twisted point where her texts encouraged him to kill himself, he does kill himself and she's charged with "involuntary" manslaughter despite it being the outcome she apparently intended. But I think it's a huge stretch with either theory.

 

Isn't that usage correct?