Court hears case of teen who sent friend texts urging suicide
CBS/AP April 7, 2016, 3:45 PM
Overview:
This article talks about a girl who sent text
messages to her boyfriend urging him to kill himself, and as a matter of fact
the boyfriend ended up actually committing suicide. The young lady-Michelle
Carter and her boyfriend-Conrad Roy III were a couple for months and their
relationship was not turning out quite well as Carter had lately, been
pressuring Roy into killing himself while she already knew that he suffered
from depression and other mental illnesses. Roy had already attempted suicide
in other situations as reporters stated. In the court prosecutors were stating
that Carter (the girl) is guilty of "involuntary manslaughter".
Defendants for Carter were arguing that they were just words and she committed
no crimes. In one situation Conrad Roy was in his car inhaling dangerous Carbon
monoxide fumes while on the phone with Carter. Carter ended up telling him to
get back in the car after he went to get out. However, this was not the
occasion that Roy took his life and in other situations Carter tried
desperately to talk him out of it but quit 2 weeks prior to his suicide. Later
on after repeatedly tying her hardest to stop her boyfriend from killing
himself, Roy committed the deed by an act of using gasoline fumes to overtake
himself. The law states that Carter could be sentenced to time of up to 20
years in prison but she was let off on bail. After the matter Carter held
baseball tournaments to raise money for people with mental illnesses and she
posted several heart felt posts on social media that expressed how much she missed
Roy.
Michelle and
Conrad above.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/02/27/26273ADD00000578-0-image-a-22_1425053357818.jpg
Opinion:
In my opinion, and from a civic point of view,
there should be some charge or punishment for Carter. This would be appropriate
because she did urge Roy to kill himself as she stated herself. Carter also
knew that he struggled with mental illness issues and that he has attempted
suicide before so she should not have meddled with this. Carter did not commit
a law from the books but it can surely be linked to some other crimes such as
manslaughter which could result in a 20 year sentence. To consider another
perspective-in the eyes of the defendant’s (Carter) family, they feel that she
did not genuinely mean the words she spoke and that the young girl did not
realize the damage her words could cause. Another topic is that Conrad Roy was
already committing an illegal act-suicide. People are only now taking this into
consideration and I do not understand why family did not help Roy if they knew
this could have happened. Another debatable topic is the "blame
card", whose fault was all of this, or who is to blame. In my opinion each
person is to blame because firstly, Carter should not have sent text messages
of this extent to someone they know suffers from mental illnesses like
depression. Secondly, there is also blame to be placed on Roy, and although it
is devastating that he has passed away, people are responsible for their own
actions and maybe he should have had more help from his family to avoid this
situation. Overall, a civic solution for a problem like this could be to primarily
get adults involved because clearly Roy was not very close with his family as
they most likely would have helped the situation before it grew to a larger scale.
Also, to avoid an issue like this, a lesson to know for the future could be
that you should think about who you’re talking to and what could harm them
before you say something extremely harsh. No matter what they have said to you,
Carter could have maybe had better luck helping Roy stop his urge for suicide
if she had not told him to go on with it half-heartedly.
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