User:ErinHowarth/5

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Megan Myers was a teen ager being treated for depression. She succumbed to her illness and took her own life by hanging after her boyfriend rejected her. Further investigation revealed that the boy she thought she had been corresponding with for the past five weeks was actually a former girl friend posing as a boy on the Internet. The "rejection" took the form of dozens of malicious messages from other MySpace users. Two hours later, Megan was dead. In the wake of this tragedy, a public debate has ensued over whether or not the child is criminally responsible for Megan's death. It seems clear that her intentions were malicious, but there doesn't seem to be a crime to charge her with. I was curious to discover if I could find any record of any other case of anyone being held responsible for someone's suicide.

It seems to me that if a person can be charged with murder if someone dies during the commission of a robbery, then someone ought to be able to charge someone with these deaths.

• Leslie Fountain killed himself in England after receiving and email message telling him that he had won and asking for bank account details so the money could be transferred. Instead, the accounts were used for laundering money. ("Suicide of internet scam victim", BBC News, 2004-01-30. Retrieved on 2008-05-19. ) Clearly, he seems to be the victim of a crime. Investigators are pursuing the criminals, but there is no talk of charging them as conspirators in Mr. Fountain's suicide.
• Steven Carmichael-Timson killed himself in Wales after his business failed. Further investigation revealed that he had received more than 700 email messages in 17 days encouraging him to kill himself and advising him on various methods. His widow is encouraging the government to crack down on this sort of thing. (Coles, John. "Driven to suicide by websites", The Sun, 2008-05-10. Retrieved on 2008-05-19. ) I'm pretty sure that it is protected free speech to talk about suicide, but it might be different to encourage someone to kill themselves. If not, this might be a good reason to make suicide a crime again, if only to make it illegal to encourage other to kill themselves.