# KYS
**URL:** https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/kys/44709
**Category:** Society, Government, and Economics
**Created:** [June 22, 2017, 7:53pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/kys/44709 "2017-06-22T19:53:42Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Urwrongx1000](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/Urwrongx1000)
#### Post date: [June 22, 2017, 7:53pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/kys/44709/1 "2017-06-22T19:53:42Z")
[finance.yahoo.com/news/may-jail … 00659.html](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/may-jailed-telling-someone-die-192500659.html)
> [@](#):
>
> Words can kill, a Massachusetts Juvenile Court judge decided last Friday, when he found 20-year old Michelle Carter guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the 2014 suicide of her then-boyfriend, Conrad Roy III. This decision, with its broad interpretation of the manslaughter statute, could potentially pose long-lasting consequences for how we speak to each other online and how cyberbullying is addressed by social media platforms.
>
> According to the prosecution, Carter spent the two weeks before Roy’s suicide texting him encouragement to kill himself. On July 12th, 2014, Roy drove to a remote Target parking lot and filled the cab of his truck with carbon monoxide from an external generator.
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> He reportedly called Carter while the truck filled with fumes. At one point, Roy changed his mind about committing suicide and exited the cab but went back in at Carter’s urging. She then listened to him slowly die without calling emergency medical services for help. What’s more, the prosecution only learned of this phone conversation only from texts sent between Carter and a friend weeks after the incident.
>
> While courts have generally treated suicide as an act of free will, Judge Lawrence Moniz decided last week that Carter’s actions (and subsequent inaction) influenced Roy’s thinking enough to warrant her liability in his death. According to Massachusetts state law, involuntary manslaughter is defined as “an unlawful killing that was unintentionally caused as the result of the defendant’s wanton or reckless conduct” and is punishable “by imprisonment in the state prison for not more than 20 years or by a fine of not more than $1,000 and imprisonment in jail or a house of correction for not more than two-and-one-half years.”
>
> This ruling is not sitting well with the Massachusetts branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). “It presents a number of problems, both from the criminal-justice standpoint and from a freedom-of-speech standpoint,” ACLU of Massachusetts Legal Director Matthew Segal said. “For criminal justice, this is a very aggressive charge. You don’t have to believe that what Ms. Carter said is appropriate. In fact, you can believe that what she said was awful and still believe that it isn’t manslaughter.”
>
> Professor Robert Weisberg, faculty co-director at the Stanford Criminal Justice Center, isn’t so sure. “I think it’s a perfectly plausible interpretation of the involuntary-manslaughter statute,” he said. “The attraction of it for the prosecutor was that, although we now have lots of very specific cyberbullying statutes in various states, there’s nothing in our homicide statutes, generally, which limits the crime to a particular way of causing death. You have to cause death and you have to cause it with a certain mental state in which, in this case, it’s a kind of version of recklessness.”
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> From the free-speech standpoint, the ACLU is concerned that if this conviction is upheld, it may lead to “all kinds of other prosecutions.” Legal issues aside, he worries that this prosecution may dissuade people from engaging in uncomfortable but necessary dialogues with their loved ones, such as discussions about end-of-life decisions.
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> “The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has seemingly committed itself to the view that should one spouse convince the other to commit suicide because, say, her spouse was in horrible pain and suffering, she could be found guilty of manslaughter,” Segal argued. “It really shouldn’t be within the prosecutor’s discretion whether to charge them. … And the mere possibility that this would be a crime in Massachusetts would make people afraid to even have that [end-of-life] discussion.”
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> Here again, Weiberg disagrees. “My guess is that this will have very little effect on free speech,” he said. “If anything, it’s likely to embolden prosecutors” to try to imitate this interpretation in similar cases of suicide.
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> And whether this verdict even holds up on appeal is very much still up in the air. “There’s a good chance that the case the conviction can be overturned,” Weisberg said. “The boldest thing that the prosecutor did was argue that [Roy] would not have killed himself had it not been for her influence. Appellate-case law about causation makes it difficult to prove cause when there’s a suicide. There are cases where somebody commits a horrible assault on somebody else, like a sexual assault, and then the victim of the assault commits suicide. This is a different kind of case. This is kind of persuasion.”
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> The ACLU is also concerned that the youth of the commonwealth could be adversely affected by this ruling. Segal points out that the prosecution did not attempt to try Carter under more-constrained cyberbullying laws but rather a more expansive theory of what constitutes criminally negligent homicide.
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> “I don’t remember the defense for Ms. Carter asking the judge to condone what she said; 17-year-olds across this country say all sorts of horrible things to each other and urge each other to do things that are unwise. The consequence is that all that talk could be charged as crimes. … There’s no limit to the kinds of crimes our children can be charged with.”
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> However, it isn’t that different from yelling fire in a crowded theater, Dr. Sameer Hinduja, professor of criminology and criminal justice at Florida Atlantic University and co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center, argues. It’s akin to joking about bomb plots on Capitol Hill. “Sometimes you do have certain situations where the bigger-picture goals call for censorship or a bit of control over what is being said,” he said. “We don’t want everyone to say just whatever they want.”
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> Hinduja believes that Carter’s words and text constituted cyberbullying, which he defines as “intentional and repeated harm inflicted through the use of electronic devices.” Hinduja said that harm “is typically insults, name calling or threats, or are forms of embarrassment and humiliation.”
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> What Carter did was “inducing him to feel awful enough about himself to the point that he took his own life, that would be harm,” he said. “[Roy] was harmed psychologically and emotionally based on those words. He did research the methods and made some sort of a plan, but at some point he also wanted to not kill himself and demonstrated that as well,” Hinduja added “So her words, not exclusively but maybe indirectly, led him to follow through” with his plan.
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> Cyberbullying is typically more of an offshoot or companion of physical bullying, Hinduja said, wherein the aggressor tends to be someone from school or the neighborhood who continues his attacks and harassment from the day on social media. “It’s very easy to continue that cruelty online,” Hinduja said.
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> Criminalization certainly didn’t work on the war on drugs, but perhaps it could work in the war on being a jerk online. “I actually think if there were a legal intervention, that would make a difference [in moderating harassment and abuse online],” Weisberg said. “The involuntary-manslaughter case would be very rare (though, fortunately, very few people may end up like the victim here) but I think a serious threat of low-level cyberbullying convictions, misdemeanor convictions, could change behavior. I think that’s probably the way to go.”
>
> So what’s to be done to curb this behavior outside of criminalizing it? Hinduja hopes that social mores will change sufficiently to dissuade people from constantly encouraging each other to go die in various fires. If not, Hinduja said, “based on this verdict, maybe we’re opening a Pandora’s box, where if you do say something like that to another individual repeatedly” and can be identified by law enforcement, “maybe you share in the guilt or are culpable to some degree.” The threat of prosecution could be sufficient to stifle this sort of harassment online.
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> Segal, however, doesn’t think curbing such speech will be easily accomplished through censorship and threats of prison time. “We all know that even if there is a chilling effect [brought on by legal liabilities],” he said, “kids are going to continue to be kids.”
KYS
Three letters, should it land people in jail?
Free Speech?
Surprisingly quiet, no discussions about this topic…?
Maybe everybody is just brain dead?
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### Author:  [@fuse](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/fuse)
#### Post date: [June 23, 2017, 3:23am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/kys/44709/2 "2017-06-23T03:23:11Z")
What about shouting one word, “fire” ? Should it land anyone in jail?
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### Author:  [@Urwrongx1000](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/Urwrongx1000)
#### Post date: [June 23, 2017, 3:50am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/kys/44709/3 "2017-06-23T03:50:42Z")
> [@fuse](#):
>
> What about shouting one word, “fire” ? Should it land anyone in jail?
You’re wrong.
What’s the rate at which people yell fire in crowded theaters as pranks, versus the amount of times young people and kids tell each other to kill yourself?
Not comparable in the slightest. Seems like nobody around here knows the ramifications for these types of legal rulings.
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### Author:  [@fuse](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/fuse)
#### Post date: [June 23, 2017, 3:58am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/kys/44709/4 "2017-06-23T03:58:15Z")
Oh, we’re qualifying now?
> [@Urwrongx1000](#):
>
> yell fire in crowded theaters
“engage in an extended (2 weeks) campaign of persuading and helping someone commit suicide, bearing witness and not letting anyone else know”
What’s the rate at which that happens?
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### Author:  [@WendyDarling](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/WendyDarling)
#### Post date: [June 23, 2017, 5:28am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/kys/44709/5 "2017-06-23T05:28:57Z")
A mentally unstable teenager (that girl) is not responsible for the wellbeing of another mentally unstable teenager (that boy who committed suicide). If being mean or spiteful is a serious crime, then everybody should be behind bars. The kid who committed suicides parents should be held accountable for his depleted mental health, his “too private” goings on, they should have cared enough to watch over his shoulder online, in texts, etc. Today’s teenagers are as sneaky as Hell, they deserve very limited privacy and no tech privacy period.
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### Author:  [@fuse](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/fuse)
#### Post date: [June 23, 2017, 5:49am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/kys/44709/6 "2017-06-23T05:49:17Z")
> [@WendyDarling](#):
>
> A mentally unstable teenager
…interesting interpretation of a cold-hearted 20 year old. She was tactful and persistent.
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### Author:  [@WendyDarling](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/WendyDarling)
#### Post date: [June 23, 2017, 5:50am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/kys/44709/7 "2017-06-23T05:50:27Z")
The event happened in 2014 when she was an underaged teenager.
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### Author:  [@fuse](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/fuse)
#### Post date: [June 23, 2017, 5:57am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/kys/44709/8 "2017-06-23T05:57:50Z")
Oh true, she was what 16/17 at the time? Still cold-hearted, tactful and persistent.
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### Author:  [@WendyDarling](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/WendyDarling)
#### Post date: [June 23, 2017, 6:00am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/kys/44709/9 "2017-06-23T06:00:51Z")
A kid is a kid. Society needs to decide the undeniable age of a child (18 yrs. or 16 yrs. or 20 yrs…one age) rather than picking and choosing who is a child and who is an adult on a case by case basis.
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### Author:  [@Urwrongx1000](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/Urwrongx1000)
#### Post date: [June 23, 2017, 6:01am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/kys/44709/10 "2017-06-23T06:01:22Z")
Wendy is right.
Fuse is wrong.
> [@WendyDarling](#):
>
> A mentally unstable teenager (that girl) is not responsible for the wellbeing of another mentally unstable teenager (that boy who committed suicide). If being mean or spiteful is a serious crime, then everybody should be behind bars. The kid who committed suicides parents should be held accountable for his depleted mental health, his “too private” goings on, they should have cared enough to watch over his shoulder online, in texts, etc. Today’s teenagers are as sneaky as Hell, they deserve very limited privacy and no tech privacy period.
The ruling was unjust. Even if it were possible to cause somebody’s suicide by jeering and egging them on, still doesn’t mean it should count as a crime. It’s a slippery-slope. At what point can influence be measured?
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### Author:  [@fuse](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/fuse)
#### Post date: [June 23, 2017, 6:03am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/kys/44709/11 "2017-06-23T06:03:21Z")
God, if I did that to somebody at 16/17, I would hope someone would set me straight, if not legally then another way.
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### Author:  [@Urwrongx1000](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/Urwrongx1000)
#### Post date: [June 23, 2017, 6:06am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/kys/44709/12 "2017-06-23T06:06:43Z")
So, according to fuse, if somebody tells another to walk out into traffic, and the other does it, then that is murder or attempted murder.
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### Author:  [@WendyDarling](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/WendyDarling)
#### Post date: [June 23, 2017, 6:06am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/kys/44709/13 "2017-06-23T06:06:56Z")
One smile can change the course of someone’s life given at the right time.
“Better to be the one who smiled, than the one who didn’t smile back.”
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### Author:  [@fuse](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/fuse)
#### Post date: [June 23, 2017, 6:26am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/kys/44709/14 "2017-06-23T06:26:14Z")
> [@WendyDarling](#):
>
> A kid is a kid. Society needs to decide the undeniable age of a child (18 yrs. or 16 yrs. or 20 yrs…one age) rather than picking and choosing who is a child and who is an adult on a case by case basis.
We develop different capacities at different ages, and still there is variation from person to person. “Adult” is an often arbitrary average, with respect to many of the key points in a person’s development.
If at 16 you think your troubled friend should kill himself, you implore him to do so with fake sweetness and darken any hope or resistance he has against the idea - things have gone terribly wrong. There’s no naivety defense for that, just psychopathy.
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### Author:  [@WendyDarling](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/WendyDarling)
#### Post date: [June 23, 2017, 6:33am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/kys/44709/15 "2017-06-23T06:33:41Z")
Are laws supposed to be arbitrary?
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### Author:  [@fuse](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/fuse)
#### Post date: [June 23, 2017, 6:57am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/kys/44709/16 "2017-06-23T06:57:17Z")
> [@Urwrongx1000](#):
>
> So, according to fuse, if somebody tells another to walk out into traffic, and the other does it, then that is murder or attempted murder.
I’ve never given an opinion in this thread or anywhere else on what the consequences for this crime should be. But the collegiality of your arguments cannot be ignored. Please let me meet your sophomoric strawman with…a sophomoric strawman.
According to Urwrongx1000, it’s unclear whether anyone can be influenced, let alone manipulated, through speech. Lies in business, under oath, threats of violence, verbal abuse, harassment - speech can never be criminal, because the precise effect on other people just can’t be measured.
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### Author:  [@WendyDarling](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/WendyDarling)
#### Post date: [June 23, 2017, 6:59am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/kys/44709/17 "2017-06-23T06:59:59Z")
Fuse,
Let’s discuss what the age of an adult should be across the legal board and why.
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### Author:  [@fuse](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/fuse)
#### Post date: [June 23, 2017, 7:01am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/kys/44709/18 "2017-06-23T07:01:41Z")
Forget the word adult. It’s an imaginary line in the sand. Sometimes the law has to deal in arbitrary lines to maintain a semblance of order. With respect to innumerable human realities, arbitrary lines will always fall short of perfect justice.
What matters in this case is this:
If at 16 you think your troubled friend should kill himself, you implore him to do so with fake sweetness and darken any hope or resistance he has against the idea - things have gone terribly wrong. There’s no naivety defense for that, just psychopathy.
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### Author:  [@WendyDarling](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/WendyDarling)
#### Post date: [June 23, 2017, 7:04am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/kys/44709/19 "2017-06-23T07:04:11Z")
Why do you wish to skirt this issue when courts have no way of determining a child’s development nor can they afford the costs to investigate every child’s competence?
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### Author:  [@WendyDarling](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/WendyDarling)
#### Post date: [June 23, 2017, 7:09am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/kys/44709/20 "2017-06-23T07:09:39Z")
At 20, an adult is birthed. Most of the hormonal shifts have transpired, the teenaged years have passed, 20 year olds have some life experience and more of a perspective on their own behaviors separate from individuals say in the pressure-cooker called highschool.
Help? More reasons needed.
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