Former Nurse Charged With Aiding Suicides Via Web

mernil writes "A former US nurse has been charged with two counts of aiding suicides on the Internet, US officials say. William Melchert-Dinkel, 47, is accused of encouraging the suicides of Mark Drybrough from Coventry, UK, in 2005 and Canada's Nadia Kajouji in 2008. Melchert-Dinkel, from Minnesota, allegedly posed as a female nurse, instructing people in suicide chatrooms how to take their lives. He reportedly admitted helping five or fewer people kill themselves. Some legal experts say it could be difficult to prosecute Melchert-Dinkel under a rarely used law because he allegedly only encouraged the victims to kill themselves, without physically helping them to take their lives."

Comments

Ok, so what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Killing yourself is, and should be, an individual's choice. Providing responsible and accurate on how to do it without causing oneself a lot of pain and suffering is a good deed, not a crime.

Re:Ok, so what?

[Khashishi]

I think suicide should be legal provided that you inform the proper authorities and close up some loose ends.

Re:Ok, so what?

[Golddess]

And that's a problem... why? Seriously, if someone wants to kill themself, as long as they are not leaving a burden on the people they are leaving behind, what's the big deal?

Re:Ok, so what?

[nbauman]

An individual choice has to be a rational, informed decision.

William Melchert-Dinkel was a nurse. He could identify and take advantage of vulnerable people, who were clinically depressed and unable to make rational, informed decisions. He tricked them into making irrational uninformed decisions.

It's as if you had a curable cancer and he told you, "I'm a nurse. Your cancer is incurable. You're going to die painfully. You'd be better off killing yourself now."

This is similar to the situation that doctors deal with every day in which a patient who is dying has to decide whether they want to stop treatment.

A patient has to be capable of making a rational decision. Some drugs and medical conditions make people depressed (independent of the normal depression that comes from dealing with the situation of an illness). Regularly, people decide during an illness that they don't want to live, change their mind after they get better, and are glad they didn't die.

Depression itself can be a clinical condition. People who are treated with drugs or talk therapy often get better, sometimes dramatically so. If a drug can make such a dramatic difference, that without the drug your individual choice is to die, and with the drug your individual choice is to live, that shows you how unreliable and irrational individual choice is.

I would reluctantly concede that people who don't want to live simply because the burden of life is too much, and who have been treated unsuccessfully for depression, physical pain, or any other cause, have a right to kill themselves. Quadriplegics have a legal right to refuse feeding. But that's only after they've exhausted every other option, which wasn't the case here.

We give people the right to make an individual choice to die, but not when they're obviously incapable of making a rational decision. Most of us want the government to interfere and stop us from killing ourselves when we're temporarily irrational.

Re:Ok, so what?

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

I will never kill myself willingly, and I am shamed for that fact.

The fact that you feel shame for this says interesting and rather uncomplimentary things about the society that trained you.

Re:Ok, so what?

[gnasher719]

And that's a problem... why? Seriously, if someone wants to kill themself, as long as they are not leaving a burden on the people they are leaving behind, what's the big deal?

The problem is that many people who are suicidal are just suffering from mental problems that could be cured. Allowing someone to commit suicide or assisting them when the only cause for the suicide is a treatable mental illness is the same as allowing someone to die when they have a medical problem that is lethal, but only when untreated.

Re:Ok, so what?

[Nyder]

Except that's not what happened, this guy pretended to be a woman, made fake suicide pacts and actually pressured people to go through with them.

People don't get "pressured" into killing themselves. they make the decision themselves.

Those people obviously wanted to kill themselves, the fact that he may have encourage them to shouldn't even be relavent.

Sure, the guy is most likely scum, but the truth is, those people were looking for an excuse to die, and now their family or whomever want someone to blame.

Look, the world is full of all sorts of peeps. Some are nice, some are mean, some are mentally ill, some are physically ill. It's just how it is. some of us want to live forever, some of us don't want to live at all.

Just accept it and move on with your life.

Re:Hmm

[h00manist]

Seriously, if they want to reduce murder and violence, they should start where it happens most, where it's planned and practiced in greatest numbers. Governments and corporations, mostly. Everywhere and always. Pass a law saying "no torture, violence or killing, no exceptions for anyone", and presto, you get quite the revolution and shove society into dealing with the future. Lots of questioning and crisis getting there, but a real future nonetheless.

Quite right

[Snaller]

Suicide should be a human right.

If society tries to ban that THEY MUST help the person in every way and totally support them their entire lives - and if they are not prepared to do that they should shut up and back off and not prevent people from ending their lives if that is what they feel they must.

Re:Quite right

[h00manist]

Suicide should be a human right.

From what I know, from a humanist philosophy point of view, any human being needs to have the right to full control of their body. So if someone wants to do something insane with their body, they are entitled to it. Encouraging mutilation or death however, would not be humanist. So if you decide you want to die, fine. If you want to preach people should want to die, need help to die, should be sold equipment, manuals, videos, books, have suicide parties, suicide lounges, suicide workshops, suicide encouragement boot camps, pro suicide marketing campaigns, etc, all of which is speech, well, that would be psychological violence. Thats ideals, philosophy, morality, etc however. The field of law is another matter, and how to word the law so it's not abused either way is not so easy.

Re:Quite right

[b4upoo]

Sometimes there is no difference between the simple truth and what you call psychological violence. When a person faces nothing but grim days, poverty, pain,abuse and disease recommending suicide should not be called a crime. There are some people in such rotten conditions that they really need to die. Pointing that out to them is not always a hostile act. I'm not sure that the law should ever get involved in such an issue.

Re:Utter insanity

[h00manist]

While I agree in principle on the absolute-freedom-of-speech idea, there is one difficult question with it. Speech encouraging and promoting violence to be practiced, promoting hatred, planning for weapons gathering, etc. Yes, the crime is in those who practice it, not preach it. But every massacre starts with a few people preaching it, then lots of people going nuts and doing it, with no way or controlling it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_Genocide -- "According to recent commentators the news media played a crucial role in the genocide: local print and radio media fueled the killings, while the international media either ignored or seriously misconstrued events on the ground.[11] The print media in Rwanda is believed to have started hate speech against Tutsis which was later continued by radio stations. According to commentators anti-Tutsi hate speech "became so systemic as to seem the norm." The state-owned newspaper Kangura had a central role, starting an anti-Tutsi and anti-RPF campaign in October 1990."

Re:Hmm

[Kenoli]

No violence or else.

Re:Hmm

[master0ne]

except that the person here isnt a "she" only pretending to be a female, and made suicide pacts with these "victims" to encourage them to do so. It could be argued that without this persons "advice" there people could very well be alive and happy. They were not terminally ill... there was no counseling to prove they were even clinically depressed... this person coerced these people into suicide for his own entertainment. I have a problem with someone doing something as deceitful and horrible as this.

Re:mob justice

[jollyreaper]

He pretended to be a female nurse in order to instruct others on how to commit suicide.

No, he was goading people into committing suicide by presenting a sympathetic ear, the female bit of course being a big incentive for his lonely victims.

Suicide pacts are fairly common in Japan. You get suicidal people meeting on the net and forming dysfunctional little suicide support groups. They don't want to die alone so they get together to kill themselves, usually C02 poisoning from a charcoal grill. You just go to sleep and don't wake up. Often times the peer pressure of having a group will sweep people along to do things they would have lost gumption for if alone.

These people might have killed themselves without his influence but he could very well have been the impetus to push them over the edge. I've known people who got their rocks off with manipulating people but this really takes it just about as far as it could go.

Re:Example of "help" provided

[Anonymous Coward]

FTFA:

But shortly after moving away from home, she started using drugs and became depressed. She began taking antidepressants. Then there was a breakup with a boyfriend.

Drugs, antidepressants (which can actually cause suicidal thinking in young people) and emotional distress are a recipe for suicide. The guy's an asshole, but she is ultimately the one responsible for her own life. I really don't see how a prosecutor is going to be able to say that this guy's coaxing was the determining factor for her suicide. Afterall, she was hanging out in suicide chatrooms, so it's obvious that she had a predilection to kill herself.

I really hope that the ACLU steps in to represent the guy, because this is a important free speech issue.

Re:Utter insanity

[b4dc0d3r]

Define "go after", you pompous horse-fucking fart-smelling cross-dressing dim-witted thespian, who eats babies and impregnates women of a different race and is a shill for the Pretend-Nurse Unintentional Suicide Encouragement Association? I saw you littering, this person is a litterer and I'm sure I have proof around here somewhere.

So what happens now, how do you "go after" someone? I turn the above paragraph into a commercial and play it on every American Idol commercial break. You are internationally known as the poster who is insulted during American Idol, and I update the commercial to contain information relevant to whatever you're doing. Want a loan? Well you borrowed $800 from me and I never saw it. Looking to date someone? Well you wouldn't agree to a date if you know what happened to the last 2 relationships.

That's slander, and you say "prove it" - to whom? You buy a commercial slot to simply say "prove it"? Do you know how many athletes and other popular figures get caught, say "prove it" and end up in jail? A denial these days is almost the same as admission of guilt, and "prove it" is pretty much you saying "yeah, so?"

I've only done slander and libel, you say it's no big deal, your reply is "prove it." What action without proof do I even need to take at this point? How do you "go after" me without slander and libel laws? Screw the people who believed me, they're the ones who failed to investigate my claims, right? And how does the state have any obligation to you if you think slander and libel are not a problem?

If you can afford to rebut an international commercial slot, great. But since you can't the little guy just has to file a lawsuit for a few hundred dollars, instead of buying millions of dollars of advertising slots.

Re:So now we can't tell some jerk to "drop dead"?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's contextual. Speech doesn't mean anything that is a vocalization. Vocalizations can be speech, or they can be intended to create immediate, injurious actions, bypassing other people's rational cognitive function.

There's nothing wrong with using the word "Fire" but shouting it in a crowded theater is not protected free speech. Similarly, telling somebody to drop dead is generally protected by your right to free speech, sure, but if you go up to somebody standing on a ledge, who is clearly mentally ill and considering suicide and you tell *them* "Drop dead, you worthless sack of shit. Nobody likes you and nobody will care if you are dead", well you are no longer expressing yourself in a manner intended to convey ideas to a rational actor (speech), but rather trying to cause an imminent action that you know will be fatal to another person.

Re:Example of "help" provided

[Mabbo]

The girl was seriously ill. Anyone who's dealt with depression has been there, myself very much included. The difference is that when I was there, and I talked with people online, they encouraged me to get help, told me that life was worth living. I was on an edge, and they helped me back off of it. If I had been chatting with him instead, while he pretended to be a medical professional, well then I truly do believe I'd be dead today. He was trying to encourage her to hang herself on webcam so that he could watch her die- like he had others before her. That's psychotic, and downright wrong.

Re:Example of "help" provided

[Anonymous Coward]

That's psychotic, and downright wrong.

I agree, his behavior is morally and ethically repulsive, but not illegal.

Re:Example of "help" provided

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't see anything wrong with pretending to be someone else in order to gain trust, then falsely entering a "suicide pact" with that person, then actively encouraging them to do it on a webcam?

Words fail me, as well.

Melchert-Dinkel was clearly steering Kajouji into a suicide that he could watch from the comfort of his desk chair, watching it streaming live from her webcam.

Perhaps if you don't see anything wrong that, you can agree that he's a twisted fuck and should probably be stopped before his snuff addiction gets worse?