A10 Editorial The Boston Globe WEDNESDAY, JULY 31, 2019
T
he Michelle Carter case — in which the Plainville
womanwassentencedto 15 monthsbehindbarsfor
goading 18-year-old Conrad Roy III into committing
suicide, via cellphone calls and text messages —
exposed a significant gray area in the Massachusetts
criminal code. The specific crime a Bristol County judge convicted
her of was involuntary manslaughter, and even making that charge
stick required two trips to the Supreme Judicial Court. One reason
forallthelegalbrinkmanship:Unlikemostotherstates,the
Commonwealth doesn’t have a law that explicitly defines coerced
suicide and makes it a crime.
One of the lessons of the tragic case: Massachusetts needs a new
statute to charge individuals who incite, coerce, or manipulate
someone else into committing or attempting suicide. Last week,
state legislators introduced a bill — known as “Conrad’s Law” —
that would penalize such coercion with up to five years in prison.
Massachusetts is one of just 10 states that don’t penalize suicide
coercion, according to state Senator Barry
Finegold, who filed the bill with state Repre-
sentative Natalie Higgins. Their bill would
set out clearly what suicide coercion is —
and, just as important, what’s it’s not.
In Carter’s case, prosecutors had to find a
novel way to obtain justice, via the
involuntary manslaughter charge. The judge
found that Carter’s “wanton and reckless
conduct” resulted in the death of Roy, her
boyfriend at the time. Carter appealed her
conviction, which was unanimously upheld
by the state Supreme Judicial Court in a decision stating that she
acted with criminal intent when she “badgered” Roy into killing
himself. Her defense team had argued that Carter’s texting and
phone calls with Roy were protected by the First Amendment as
free speech. But as the state’s high court wrote: “We are... not
punishing words alone... but reckless or wanton words causing
death.”
The Carter case, and the SJC ruling, practically begged for
legislation to define when coercion crosses the line into illegality.
Finegold and Higgings intentionally built a narrow bill: A person
could be charged with coercion only if they know that the victim is
suicidal and/or has a history of suicidal ideation. Additionally, they
would have to intentionally provide “the physical means, or
knowledge of such means” to the victim so they could commit or
attempt suicide; or they would have to exercise “substantial
control” or “undue influence” over the victim.
In a press conference, Finegold and Higgins noted the rise in
teen suicide rates as another driver of the proposal. “I see on a daily
basis how influential young people can be on each other’s mental
health,” Finegold told reporters. “Just straight-on bullying is not
something that would get this charge. But if you are someone who
is passionately coercing someone, saying they should take this act,
then they could be charged.”
The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts opposes
the bill, while acknowledging it’s a well-intentioned effort. A
particularly problematic piece of the legislation is the “provision
that authorizes prosecutions for what the bill calls undue
influence,” said Matthew Segal, the ACLU of Massachusetts’ legal
director. “It will potentially open up all kinds of vague prosecutions
of speech based on prosecutors’ judgment that one person has
bewitched another.”
Opponents of the Carter prosecution also worry that the prece-
dent could be turned against doctors who participate in end-of-life
discussions with patients. But having a clear definition of coerced
suicide in Massachusetts would actually protect doctors, in the
event that physician-assisted suicide becomes legal in the state, by
laying out clear guardrails. A law like Finegold and Higgins’s would
also help reassure the public (who rejected physician-assisted sui-
cide in a 2012 ballot question) that such a policy would come with
safeguards for the vulnerable. And, in an additional protection, Fi-
negold and Higgins’s proposal specifically includes an exemption
for doctor-assisted suicide, even though Massachusetts has not le-
galized the practice. (A so-called “death with dignity” bill is pending
in the Legislature.)
Suicide coercion cases are notably rare. But there’s an obvious
difference between the way Michelle Carter treated her victim and
the way a caring doctor would treat a terminally ill patient, and the
law should spell out that distinction.Clarifying the
complicated idea of
‘coerced suicide’
Opinion
BOSTONGLOBE.COM/OPINIONW
hen Attorney General William Barr announced last
week that the federal government would resume exe-
cuting Death Row inmates after a hiatus of more than
16 years, opponents were swift to object.
Within hours of Barr’s announcement, Representative
Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts introduced a bill to abolish capital
punishment for federal crimes. The American Civil Liberties Union said
it would challenge the new policy in court. And more than a dozen Dem-
ocratic presidential candidates condemned the Trump administration
and the death penalty. Among them was former vice president Joe
Biden, a longtime supporter of executing murderers, who had switched
his position just two days earlier.
The Justice Department has scheduled five men to be executed in De-
cember and January. Alfred Bourgeois, Dustin Honken, Daniel Lee, Lez-
mond Mitchell, and Wesley Purkey were all convicted of unspeakably
cruel and depraved murders. Their victims ranged in age from 2 to 80,
and most were tortured and terrorized before they were killed. There is
no question about the guilt of these killers, nor any claim that they have
been denied scrupulous due process of law.JEFF JACOBYWhen murder rates fell, support
for the death penalty fell too
Editorial
Y
our uncle tossing
around the n-word isn’t
funny.
Your sister-in-law
saying “those people,” when
referring to African-
Americans or Latinx, isn’t
quirky.
Your high school pal
isn’t “just playing around” during his
xenophobic rants.
They are racists. Or, as they are more
commonly known these days, President
Trump’s base.
That four-letter word — base — gets used
a lot in regard to this presidency, and for
good reason. These aren’t just supporters of
a particular political ideology or party. They
are the tireless defenders of a demagogue
who is imperiling democracy andturbocharging this nation’s most hideous
impulses.
And yes, those impulses existed long
before Trump.
So while Trump’s racism should be called
out every time it occurs, and that’s likely to
be every day between now and Nov. 3, 2020,
his supporters must also be condemned —
whether they’re in the halls of Congress, your
house of worship, and especially among your
friends and family. They are the ones who
continue to prop up this failure of a
presidency; without them, his rapt audience,
Trump is nothing.
I have no doubt that this presidency has
been hell on family gatherings. Politics has
always been a tricky topic at the dinner table.
Even in years past, we often took care to
avoid it. Of course, this never stopped those
relatives determined to go there as they
spouted certifiable lies about Obamacare
“death panels” or President Obama as some
kind of Kenyan-born Muslim version of “The
Manchurian Candidate.”
This ill-informed white nonsense was
never laughable — it was a racist reaction to
this nation’s first black president. Yet it was
rarely regarded as such, especially when
such talk came from friends and relatives.
(Still obsessed with delegitimizing the
Obama presidency, 51 percent of
Republicans and 57 percent of Trump voters
continue to believe Obama was born outside
of this country.)When it comes to those we know and
love, people often treat racism as a kind of
personality glitch, like swearing too much or
overstaying one’s welcome. It’s not. It’s an
insidious mindset rooted in hate and
supremacist politics that interrupts and ends
black and brown lives. And Trump
understood this about America — there is
always a marketplace for racism, which has
been coddled and codified for centuries. Dog
whistles were best left to those still clinging
to a shred of political correctness; a
bullhorn, Trump knew, reaches the racists
who demand their bigotry served bold and
uncut.
Unlike past presidents, Trump cannot be
parsed or sifted. You can’t enjoy the strong
economy, and ignore the roiling racism that
is the origin story of his campaign,
presidency, and bid for a second term.
Anyone who voted for Trump must own it.
All of it. If they continue to support a racist
president, they’ve invited that rot in the
White House to infest their living rooms.
And every time a relative or friend spews
their prejudice unchallenged, you normalize
it. Every time you nervously laugh along or
ignore it, you till the soil in which Trump’s
political ascension found purchase.
During these gutting two-plus years, I’ve
often thought of the 1996 book “Hitler’s
Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans
and the Holocaust.” Author Daniel
Goldhagen, a former Harvard professor,
argues that many everyday Germans not only
knew about the Holocaust as it happened
but, fueled by anti-Semitism, actively
encouraged it.
That’s how I view not only Trump
supporters but also those who claim to
despise racism yet refuse to call it out where
and when they see it. No one wants
estrangement within their families, but that
kitchen-table racism deserves no less of a
harsh rebuke than Trump’s tweets. And it
will register more of an impact.
Through numerous Gallup polls, no
president since Harry Truman enjoyed such
steady approval ratings as Trump. To be sure,
his numbers are notably lousy — 35 to 45
percent — but they’ve also barely budged
compared with his more recent predecessors.
He’s not gaining support. Still, even after
destructive decisions, and a disposition akin
to a poked bear stepping on a Lego, his
supporters are locked into this ride even if
takes them, and the country they claim they
alone love, straight into the abyss.
Calling out Trump’s racism is the easy
part. Confronting, or shunning if necessary,
that racist uncle aiding and abetting this
presidency may help banish the orange
elephant in the room.Renée Graham can be reached at
[email protected]. Follow her on
Twitter @reneeygraham.Your racist uncle
was never funny
RENÉE GRAHAMabcde
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Managing EditorAnyonewhovotedforTrumpmust
ownit.Allofit.Iftheycontinueto
supportaracistpresident,they’ve
invitedthatrotintheWhiteHouseto
infesttheirlivingrooms.
Michelle CarterNYT
The prescription sedative
imidazolam is used for executions.