We cover:
Current Events
Suicide Awareness
Suicide Prevention
World News
COVID
Mental Health Awareness
Mental Illness
Anxiety
Depression
Global Reset
Market Crash
End Days
Currency
TRUMP
NESARA GESARA
Digital Currency
Bitt Coin
Dinar
International News
Economics
Global Currency Reset
Crypto Currency
Currencies
Saturday, June 10, 2017
Law Professor Lays out 'millennial' defense for woman charged in boyfriend's suicide
The Massachusetts woman charged with manslaughter
for using text messages to pressure her boyfriend into killing himself
could get off scot-free by playing the millennial card, an expert says.
The lawyer for Michelle Carter, who was 17 at the time of her
boyfriend’s death, could argue that she was simply being a dumb teen
with a phone — and too much time on her hands — when cops said she
repeatedly urged the 18-year-old to take his own life in July 2014.
David Siegel, a professor at New England Law Boston, told
The Post that this claim could go over well with a judge, seeing how the
communication between the pair was electronic and they were both
teenagers at the time of the incident.
“This will matter because the law recognizes that kids, even
those nearly 18, are different,” he explained. “The US Supreme Court
has increasingly recognized this, by barring the death penalty for
juveniles who commit murder in 2005, by barring sentences of life
without parole for juveniles who commit serious crimes that don’t result
in death in 2010, and by barring mandatory sentences of life without
parole for juveniles who commit murder in 2012, and making this apply to
all juveniles who have ever been sentenced to life without parole in
2016.”
Modal TriggerConrad Roy IIIAP
Siegel added, “These decisions have been based on new
psychological and physiological understanding of young people’s
psychological and neurological development, and judges are aware of
this.”
Conrad Roy III, 18, had been sitting in his pickup truck in
the parking lot of a local Kmart in Fairhaven, Mass., when cops said
Carter began urging him to commit suicide.
“You can’t think about it. You just have to do it,” she told him, not long before he died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
The Supreme Court ruled last year that Carter would stand trial for involuntary manslaughter,
stating her “virtual presence” at the time of Roy’s death and the
“constant pressure” she placed on him — knowing the teen was in a
fragile mental state — were ultimately enough to warrant charges.
“This case breaks new ground in Massachusetts by the scope
of liability for risk created exclusively by remote communication,”
Siegel said. “Liability for the suicide of another is usually controlled
by a specific law, criminalizing assisting a suicide. Massachusetts is
in a minority of states that lacks such a law.”
Speaking Tuesday night, just hours after Carter appeared in
juvenile court, the law professor described what prosecutors would have
to do in court to prove she caused Roy’s suicide.
“The state must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that her
conduct was ‘wanton and reckless,’ i.e., it created a high likelihood of
substantial harm to the victim,” Siegel said. “This risk has to be more
than just a high risk of harm, it has to be done with indifference to
the harm posed to someone else. If a reasonable person, knowing what the
defendant knew — considering knowledge of the victim, his mental state,
their relationship, his circumstances, and anything else relevant —
would have recognized that this posed a grave risk of harm to the
victim, that’s sufficient.”
Some legal experts have argued that the key issue in the case would be causation, to which Siegel agreed.
“Causation will be part of the question of how much risk the
defendant created, whether it rose to the level of being wanton and
reckless,” he said. “Lots of conduct is offensive, wrong, reprehensible
and abhorrent. Those characteristics don’t make it criminal.”
Describing how technology has changed the way cases are
tried today, Siegel explained that “intentional virtual presence” could
be used against people in a court of law — though it would also depend
on the age of the user.
“It breaks new ground to hold someone responsible for
creating grave risk through remote communication, but it’s not
inconsistent with the way we increasingly live,” he said. “If you shout
fire in a crowded theater, those words are not constitutionally
protected and you could be liable for the death of a child trampled in
the ensuing melee. That’s creating a grave risk of harm to others, with
indifference to that harm. Is it substantially different if you texted
everyone in the theater an emergency message that there was a fire?”
Siegel noted how investigators were likely scouring Carter
and Roy’s message and call history to get a better sense of what was
going on between the pair.
“Whether the number, length and quality of communications
here will be sufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the defendant
was wanton and reckless — that she acted without caring about the
consequences when a reasonable person would have done so — will be a
question of fact,” he said. “That will depend on their relationship, the
context, and what she knew of the victim’s history and mental state.”
But the biggest argument that Carter’s lawyer, Joseph Cataldo, could likely make — according to Siegel — is that she was too young to have known better.
“I think their ages would be important anytime, but they’re
especially important now because the law has increasingly recognized
that young people are different and the criminal consequences of their
action need to be taken into account,” he said. “As all parents and high
school teachers know, adolescents act differently than mature adults.
They are less able, and less inclined, to assess the risk and future
consequences of their behavior…Cognitive psychological research in the
last two decades has demonstrated this, and the law now acknowledges
it.”
Cataldo claimed in court Tuesday that Carter had her own
mental health issues — which she was taking medications for — that may
have clouded her judgment. He also alleged that she was trying to stop
Roy, not encourage him.
“What’s gonna matter is whether this communication in this
context, between people of these ages, with these circumstances, was the
type that a reasonable person would’ve recognized as creating a very
great risk of harm,” Siegel concluded. With Post wires
No comments:
Post a Comment