Words can now kill

A young woman who as a teenager encouraged her suicidal boyfriend to kill himself in dozens of text messages and told him to "get back in" a truck filled with toxic gas was sentenced Thursday to 15 months in jail for involuntary manslaughter.

abcnews.go.com...

Spoken words, just words can now get you convicted of manslaughter.

Spoken words, not actions, just words can get you sent to jail.


I was torn on this issue. I was saddened to hear about what the young man did and thought that the young lady was culpable. But all she did was speak and text. She didn't use force.

She just spoke.

She just texted.

But now just saying or writing something that encourages another individual to commit an act (suicide) is punishable.


So "Just Do It" should be changed to "Just Do It as long as you are safe and no one gets harmed". Call Nike. Quickly.


I'm just a small town boy, living in this lonely world, so I don't have all the answers.

But this bothers me.

a reply to: DBCowboy

What if you text someone to commit harm on themselves from a "safe place"?

a reply to: DBCowboy

It's a tough one, alright.

She's a disgusting bit of (bleep), but she didn't use physical force. But could those texts and whatever else be defined as coercion?

Manslaughter? Not sure about that one. I would hope it'd be enough for this (bleep) to know that she, indirectly as it might have been, helped a young man, a very troubled one obviously, kill himself.

I thought about ATS when hearing that news today.

We have to be careful what we say to other ATS members. Some are pretty sensitive you know.

If I encourage a human to kill another human I should be held accountable. Same goes for if I encourage a human to kill themselves.

Well, some people are decrying the fact she's only going to get 15 months in jail. Many feel it's​ a very lenient sentence.

Personally, I don't know what to think about it all. On one hand, I feel she's complicit in the fact that instead of trying to diffuse the situation, she antagonized it, but on the other hand, it might not have mattered either way. Generally, if someone has decided to kill themself that's what they do. I mean, that is if they have genuinely made that decision.

originally posted by: DBCowboy
But now just saying or writing something that encourages another individual to commit an act (suicide) is punishable.


So "Just Do It" should be changed to "Just Do It as long as you are safe and no one gets harmed". Call Nike. Quickly.

it's not like she posted 'lol kill yourself' on an internet thread. she psychologically wore down a vulnerable person, and talked him back into the vehicle in which he intended to kill himself when he had second thoughts.

what would you have charged her with?

Yeah, it's like "I don't like the b" but it's also like 1000 other effed up things that people get into in trailer parks all over...

I'm sure in the 80s there were 100s of cases where one or the other person was drunk, miserable, shot themselves, got drunk, died over their gf, and you didn't hear it all over the news. It's this new culture of infection..

a reply to: seagull

I wouldn't see it as help..

a reply to: fiverx313

I would have charged her with a truck and some bull horns....

a reply to: DBCowboy

I hate the idea that anyone would actually do this. But, nobody forced the boys hand.

Get used to it folks... we are now living in a world of triggered snowflakes where they are responsible for nobody and nothing they do.

While I find the woman to be a total b*tch, and quite frankly, a horrible person, the conviction troubles me as well.

originally posted by: fiverx313

what would you have charged her with?

I don't know.

I don't know if I would have charged her at all.

I just don't know.

Sticks and stones my arse. I find her sentence to be complete BS. The guy made the choice to off himself. I'd hate to casually mention how nice it would be to rob a bank so I could afford the things I want only be be held accountable for a moron deciding it was a hell of an idea and doing it.

a reply to: fiverx313

I'd have charged her with nothing.

The publicity alone is enough to let everyone know what she did.

a reply to: DBCowboy

I'm on the fence, and it's tough. It reminds me of the LesMis thread about Kurt Eichenwald.

One the one hand, words in and of themselves do no harm. And people have the volition to ignore words and taunting, etc; however, if you know someone is suffering from a condition, be it physical/mental/emotional, and you know they are vulnerable (especially if you are emotionally or personally invested in that person), and you seek to exploit or influence that for your own pleasure or gain, or to initiate harm on that person, should there not be a responsibility?

It's more ethical than legal.

And it's tough...

a reply to: mericks74

I honestly don't know if I'd call it help, either...thinking a bit on it.

I'd have to look her in the eye, listen to her tell the story, to decide, I guess.

I think, however, it's safe to say, she's not a very nice person. If ever the statement "With friends like this, who needs enemies?" was apropos, this is it.

Don't let the sex of this person throw you off.. If they turn this into a rule then it's going to be EVERYBODY going to gaol..

a reply to: Liquesence

Ethical, rather than legal... That about sums it up.

Maybe not illegal, but it sure as Hell wasn't right. On that, we can all agree.

It appears that simply verbalizing your desire for harm is as good as actual, physical harm these days. The girl is a POS, but words are words. If someone told me to jump off a bridge and in doing so, I survive, but incur some hefty medical bills, should the antagonist be liable?