Several people notified me about the teenager from Massachussetts who was charged with murder for her role in urging a friend to kill himself.
Here's one link to the story. Fee free to share others that may have a different spin.
I've heard about the dangers of this happening (prosecution for encouraging suicide), but I think this is the first I have seen where the person being indicted wasn't an actual physical participant in the suicide, but rather just someone who facilitated it emotionally or psychologically without bullying, intimidation, or other possibly threatening or unlawful conduct.
This is an interesting case particularly because the victim apparently deleted all recent texts except those that the victim had with the girl? Why? To set her up?
And the oddest thing about this type of charge is that it all seems to boil down to whether she really felt badly for him and it was more like an assisted euthanasia (sympathy), or whether she just wanted to push him over the edge for self-gratification of a power trip or too garner attention and sympathy from others (pure evil)? Probably the thing that is scariest about this are the people who will feel with absolute assurance that they can look into her heart and find either evil or look into the prosecutor's heart and find overreaching or the parents' heart and find an over-willingness to spread the blame that should rightly land on them, etc., when who could know the heart of another, particularly a stranger. I find these sorts of stories to be interesting litmus tests, not just to how people will come out, but what degree of moral surety they have in something that seems so clearly unknowable unless you were one of the principal players, and even then so easy to misunderstand or misapprehend.
Here's one link to the story. Fee free to share others that may have a different spin.
I've heard about the dangers of this happening (prosecution for encouraging suicide), but I think this is the first I have seen where the person being indicted wasn't an actual physical participant in the suicide, but rather just someone who facilitated it emotionally or psychologically without bullying, intimidation, or other possibly threatening or unlawful conduct.
This is an interesting case particularly because the victim apparently deleted all recent texts except those that the victim had with the girl? Why? To set her up?
And the oddest thing about this type of charge is that it all seems to boil down to whether she really felt badly for him and it was more like an assisted euthanasia (sympathy), or whether she just wanted to push him over the edge for self-gratification of a power trip or too garner attention and sympathy from others (pure evil)? Probably the thing that is scariest about this are the people who will feel with absolute assurance that they can look into her heart and find either evil or look into the prosecutor's heart and find overreaching or the parents' heart and find an over-willingness to spread the blame that should rightly land on them, etc., when who could know the heart of another, particularly a stranger. I find these sorts of stories to be interesting litmus tests, not just to how people will come out, but what degree of moral surety they have in something that seems so clearly unknowable unless you were one of the principal players, and even then so easy to misunderstand or misapprehend.