Are the Words we use a Crime?

Hello again there readers. Let me just start off with a warning, this post is going to rustle some jimmies, this post is going to challenge some of you and it is going to upset some too. What we are about to go over is a very emotionally charged and might trouble some people.

Now that, that is out of the way I wanna get into what this post is about. I don’t much like the idea of living in a world where the words that I use can be considered a crime. A recent ruling in Massachusetts just made what you say a crime. To summarize, a young woman was texting her boyfriend and encouraging him to kill himself, which, tragically he did end up doing. Michelle Carter encouraged her then boyfriend, Conrad Roy, to kill himself. More on the particulars of the case can be found here. Carter has now been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and could face up to 20 years in prison, at the time of this writing no punishment has been laid down. If you were to guess that the reason I wanted to write about this is because I disagree with the verdict you would be correct.

There are three points I will bring up in this post, the first two will be why I disagree with the verdict and the final one will be a comparison to a famous case from over 40 years ago in California. The first issue will be how harming one’s self shouldn’t be a crime at all. The second point will be the dangerous precedence this sets going forward.. The third and final point will be comparing this with what Charlie Manson did all those years ago and how these are two different cases.

If you were to ask nearly anyone if they own their body and themselves most, if not all, would say that yes they do own their own body. This is where the idea of a victim and a crime come into play. For there to be a crime there needs to be a victim. If there is no victim then there is no crime. If we look at drug usage we see that there is no victim, no one’s rights are being infringed upon by the usage of drugs. The only person being adversely affected by the direct usage of the drugs is the user, others harmed by the user are not harmed by the drug. Drug usage does not violate the rights of another person. If you have the right to your own body then you have to right to treat it as you wish as long as it doesn’t infringe on the rights of others. If you have the right to do anything to your body then committing suicide shouldn’t be a crime in the first place. The actions that young man took that night didn’t infringe upon the rights of others.

Now on to the precedence this sets going forward. In short, the words you use can be viewed as a weapon in an involuntary manslaughter case. In all other involuntary manslaughter cases a person has to take a direct action towards another and that action has to take the other persons life. An example would be like getting into and auto accident and a person’s careless driving caused the death of another person. The actions taken by Carter do not fit this criteria. Additionally Roy was the one that took the actions against himself that took his own life. With the verdict though we now see that the words we speak when someone harms themselves can be considered a crime. Simply if one tells someone else to harm themselves you have committed a crime if they actually do harm themselves. By the other person taking an action against themselves another person could be held liable if they suggested that the other person take that action. Carter physically did nothing to Roy, he was the one that took the action against himself, which as previously discussed, shouldn’t be a crime in the first place.

This now brings us to how what Charlie Manson did and what Michelle Carter did are different. Manson was convicted of first degree murder for two people but he did not actually commit the final act that killed these two people, he did mutilate one of them before that one person was killed under his instruction. The instructions Manson gave to his followers to kill two people were the one’s he was convicted for but there is a difference, those people harmed others, not themselves. Also when one looks into the case of the Manson Family, Charlie Manson himself did kill someone, Mr. Crowe who he was not tried for murder for. I digress though, Manson’s instructions were to carry out actions against others. The instructions given by Carter to Roy were to not violate the rights of another person, but to harm himself. Another person’s rights were violated by Manson’s instructions to his recipients. What Roy did was harm himself, no one else, the rights of others weren’t violated by his actions nor the actions of Carter.

I want to be clear, Carter is a horrible person, she is evil. She had the opportunity to try and seek help for Roy but rather encouraged him to kill himself. She is just an awful person, I don’t think anyone will disagree with that statement. That said, you can’t be jailed for just being an awful person. If this post challenged you, good. If this post rustled some jimmies, good. This isn’t an easy topic to discuss for many and it stirs the emotions. I hope that this post did get you thinking about because I for one, still don’t like the idea of living in a world where the words I use can be considered a crime.

Thank you reading and please don’t forget to like and share!

Keep that coffee warm for us.

LWS