Internet Suicide Pact (s)

Tom Young

Recently I have been reading the following:

April 23, 2003

Suicide court man finally keeps his Internet pact
By Patrick Barkham, Shirley English and Helen Studd
A YEAR ago Louis Gillies entered into a suicide pact with Michael Gooden on the cliffs of Beachy Head, but unlike Mr Gooden he failed to kill himself. Yesterday, as he was due in court to face the unusual charges of aiding and abetting Mr Gooden’s suicide, he was found hanged.
The two men had “met” only days before Mr Gooden’s death in May last year when they discussed suicide in an internet chat room. They subsequently made their way to the Beachy Head Hotel, at the top of Britain’s highest chalk cliffs in East Sussex, where they had a few drinks and a meal.

They then strode 200 yards through fog to the edge of the cliffs, where Mr Gooden, 35, from South London, flung himself to his death.

A shocked friend talked Mr Gillies, 36, away from the edge on a mobile phone. Yesterday, the unemployed IT graduate completed his side of their pact and was found dead in his Glasgow home.

Mr Gooden, using the pseudonym “Annunciator”, had already posted plans for his death on the Alternative Suicide Holidays (Ash) website, to which the men, who were both single, had been drawn by a shared fascination with suicide.

On the long train journey back from the South Coast to Scotland on May 28 last year, Mr Gillies stopped at an internet café at Victoria Station, in London, and posted a euphoric message in the Ash chat room. In the slang of his online peers, Mr Gillies said that Mr Gooden had “caught the bus”.

During a lengthy police investigation, Mr Gillies had been happy to admit his role in Mr Gooden’s death. According to Sussex Police, he told them that he had turned away to speak to a friend on his mobile telephone and had not seen Mr Gooden jump. But a police source said that his account of their final moments together were “described in such a way that he must have seen Mr Gooden jump. This was one of the main planks of the prosecution.”

Lawyers and police involved in the case said yesterday that they had never come across a similar charge, in which Mr Gillies was accused of aiding, abetting, procuring or counselling the suicide of Mr Gooden. Mr Gillies’s legal team said they were confident he would have been acquitted. His solicitor said that even if Mr Gillies had been found guilty he would not have faced a prison sentence.

A spokesman for Sussex Police denied that their case had led Mr Gillies to hang himself and said that they had no evidence that he was mentally unstable. “It is a rare and unique offence,” the spokesman said. “We had to seek the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions to take these charges any further. We have to work within the law and the law states very clearly that aiding and abetting a suicide is illegal.”

Mr Gooden’s body was washed up at Eastbourne on June 7, nine days after he had jumped. Police found an internet café access card on him and traced it back to Mr Gillies. Initially they believed that the body was that of Mr Gillies and coroner’s officers arrived at his door within 48 hours with the intention of informing relatives that he was dead. They were astonished when Mr Gillies opened the door.

It is understood that he was immediately co-operative and quickly told police the full story of the chat room and how he had first met Mr Gooden at Eastbourne station on May 28.

More than 40 witnesses were due to appear at the trial at Lewes Crown Court. Faced with Mr Gillies’s failure to appear in court yesterday morning, Judge Anthony Scott-Gall adjourned the case.

Unknown to the court, police in Glasgow had just found Mr Gillies hanged behind his front door in the top-floor tenement in the fashionable West End of Glasgow, where he lived alone. Neighbours said that he was a quiet man who kept himself to himself. None of them knew him personally.

Diane Chan, counsel for the prosecution, then returned to tell the court that Mr Gillies had been found dead with a suicide note by his side.

Judge Scott-Gall said: “It is a very bleak ending to a very bleak case.”

An inquest will be held.

Coastguards were working yesterday to retrieve another body from Beachy Head.


Website messages

ON the day that Gooden jumped, Gillies posted this message on the website:

“I would just like to let you know that assure-me has caught the bus. He was very determined. He did not flinch. He ran over the precipice in UNBELIEVABLE meteorological conditions. Inspirational, poignant, mesmerising . . . I hope he has found peace.”

The next day Gillies wrote: “I was going to jump too, but I’d never been there before and it was incredibly foggy and damp, I could make out some features a very very long way down and I could see the sheer sides of the cliffs disappearing into the whiteness. There was just the roar of the sea and the spooky lament of the foghorn, but there was very light wind. It freaked me not being able to see the bottom. A friend of mine rang my mobile just as he (I still don’t know his name or anything very much about him) snapped the chip on his and my friend was mortified at what was going on, shocked with both of us. He talked to my friend for about 10 mins and my friend tried to talk him down but assure-me was incredibly calm and focused on the deed. Twenty minutes later, as dusk fell, he stripped to his underclothes and was gone.”

Anyone any thoughts on this?

seamus

Aiding and abetting suicide will always be a thorny one.

I think fundamentally you have to look at the difference between
a) Not making an attempt to prevent a suicide
b) Actively providing someone with the means to commit their suicide.

In this case, Mr Gillies didn't do b, but he definitely did a. Are they the same thing though, are they both aiding and abetting, or is one aiding and abetting, while the other is just a failure to act?

In my head, "Not acting", is not the same as "Helping". Take a robbery, for example. If someone walks into a shop (unarmed) and demands money from the till, would I be aiding and abetting that crime if I didn't attempt to stop him?

Or perhaps in this case, it's the fact that Mr. Gillies "supported" (for want of a better word) the idea of suicide that brought about the aiding and abetting charges.

Tom Young

Suicide (Assisted) S2 CL (Suicide) Act 1993

A person who aids, abets, counsels or procures the suicide of another, or an attempt by another to commit suicide, shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for a term not exceeding fourteen years.

I believe this is the correct provision along with CL Act 1997 7 and 8, Criminal Liability.

Does this also blow open the Burden of Proof and Peculaiar Knowledge Principle(s) nicely?

hullaballoo

I think this comes under the common parlance category of assisting suicide. It's similar in legal terms to euthanasia cases. I suppose it fits better with the language of 'procuring' or 'counselling' a suicide.

Insofar as the policy issues go, I'm not convinced it's the best idea to go around punishing people whose friends commit suicide with their assent, more than approval. Internet suicide pacts are an unusual creature: those who are involved do not necessarily 'know' each other insofar as they aren't fully acquainted.

Either way, it's always iffy when you hear about a suicide pact where only one person kills himself, irrespective of the events thereafter. If someone was almost suicidal, but not quite, being brought up on a charge of procuring/counselling a suicide would be a ticket for the bus.

cycleoin

"Assisting" must be distinguished from knowing that someone has a mutual intent to commit suicide. Surely "assisting" implies a degree of positive action? I'm not sure the law, or a court, should be too quick to impose criminal liability for an ommission where there is any ambiguity surrounding the governing statute?

SMERSH

Ok, say in a hypothetical situation, My friend tells me he is going to kill himself at dawn by jumping off a cliff. If I do nothing and he does and dies would I be held to be liable as I did nothing?

Tom Young

Generally no liability accrues from a failure to act, unless at the time of the failure the defendant was under a legal obligation to take positive action.

Generally the categories creating positive action or requirement to act:

Statute, Family Members, Contract (R v. Pittwood), Reliance and Duty due owing to defendants prior conduct (R v. Miller).

In general the last two posters refer to an aspect of the Criminal law which falls directly into the category of Actus Reus, that being all elements of a crime other than the mental elements, which are referred to as the mens rea (Intention, reckless and negligence). Actus reus must be voluntary for liability to accrue (thus ruling out automatism and intoxication but I don't plan to get into crimes of specific and basic intent here, see R v. Majewski or DPP v. John Reilly if you want to be totally confused). Actus reus is broken down into Omissions Liability, as outlined in brief above and Causation.

This is a nice attempted murder case to exemplify:

R v White [1910]

The defendant put potassium cyanide into a drink for his mother with intent to murder her. She was found dead shortly afterwards with the glass, three-quarters full, beside her. The medical evidence showed that she had died, not of poison, but of heart failure. The defendant was acquitted of murder and convicted of an attempt to murder. Although the consequence which the defendant intended occurred, he did not cause it to occur and there was no actus reus of murder.

hullaballoo

Tom Young wrote:

Generally no liability accrues from a failure to act, unless at the time of the failure the defendant was under a legal obligation to take positive action.

Generally the categories creating positive action or requirement to act:

Statute, Family Members, Contract (R v. Pittwood), Reliance and Duty due owing to defendants prior conduct (R v. Miller).

In general the last two posters refer to an aspect of the Criminal law which falls directly into the category of Actus Reus, that being all elements of a crime other than the mental elements, which are referred to as the mens rea (Intention, reckless and negligence). Actus reus must be voluntary for liability to accrue (thus ruling out automatism and intoxication but I don't plan to get into crimes of specific and basic intent here, see R v. Majewski or DPP v. John Reilly if you want to be totally confused). Actus reus is broken down into Omissions Liability, as outlined in brief above and Causation.

This is a nice attempted murder case to exemplify:

R v White [1910]

The defendant put potassium cyanide into a drink for his mother with intent to murder her. She was found dead shortly afterwards with the glass, three-quarters full, beside her. The medical evidence showed that she had died, not of poison, but of heart failure. The defendant was acquitted of murder and convicted of an attempt to murder. Although the consequence which the defendant intended occurred, he did not cause it to occur and there was no actus reus of murder.

Whilst that is a good legal rundown, there's one essential part of the case law in this area that is missing. If you read the HL decision and the ECtHR decision in the Pretty Litigation, you will see the difference in the approach taken to suicide.

The facts of Pretty don't apply neatly here, because in that case, the woman was to be killed by her husband. However, the legal principles discussed in it are interesting.

HL: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200102/ldjudgmt/jd011129/pretty-1.htm;
ECtHR: http://www.medical-journals.com/echr.htm.

Maximilian

I think Suicide Pacts should be legally enforceable.

Victor

Tom Young wrote:

Suicide (Assisted) S2 CL (Suicide) Act 1993

A person who aids, abets, counsels or procures the suicide of another, or an attempt by another to commit suicide, shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for a term not exceeding fourteen years.

Counsels is the bit Gillies would have been guilty of. He provided, the encouragement that gave Gooden the bravado to do what he did.

SMERSH wrote:

Ok, say in a hypothetical situation, My friend tells me he is going to kill himself at dawn by jumping off a cliff. If I do nothing and he does and dies would I be held to be liable as I did nothing?

I am not a lawyer. I suspect charges wouldn't arise in this case as you don't know for certain that he will commit suicide. Morally, you should do something.

I suspect a medical professional told directly by a client that they intend to commit suicide would at least be found guilty of negligence if they did nothing.

Its more or less the same if you friend says "I'm off to rob a bank". That said, if you friend does have a known tendency to rob banks or convictions and says "I'm off to rob AIB, Main Street at 11am, when the cash van arrives".

---

Alternative scenario, both parties jump, but one or both survive.

Tom Young

hullaball&#250 wrote:

The facts of Pretty don't apply neatly here, because in that case, the woman was to be killed by her husband. However, the legal principles discussed in it are interesting.

HL: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200102/ldjudgmt/jd011129/pretty-1.htm;
ECtHR: http://www.medical-journals.com/echr.htm.

Thanks aware of Pretty, also aware that ECHR is not fully effective here.

Particularly on grounds of Religious, Moral or National Security.

The 2003 Act is a diet deal, sections 2 and 5 with the incompatibility declaration does not go far enough. While I think getting an ex gratia payment from the AG is nice, its no use if I've jumped off a cliff and seek to rely on ECHR Act Article 6 or 10. :eek:

Charleton J's analysis in Doherty this year is a prime example, as is Laffoy J in Carmody and Grace

Carmody: http://www.courts.ie/Judgments.nsf/09859e7a3f34669680256ef3004a27de/742237cf96c71e74802570d7003c9409?OpenDocument

Doherty: http://www.courts.ie/judgments.nsf/597645521f07ac9a80256ef30048ca52/d3c9363e19c7988f8025728e00501570?OpenDocument

Grace: http://www.courts.ie/80256F2B00356A6B/0/85154067ED37EB43802572C3002F2D13?Open&Highlight=0,grace,~language_en~

What I like about Charleton's Judgement is that he refers to the UK extensively. The case is also one which deals with the Doctrine of Non-Justiciability.

Am not sure I'd agree that it would wash. I guess I'm not disagreeing with you, but I can't see that pleading it would make a blind bit of difference.

Victor wrote:

Alternative scenario, both parties jump, but one or both survive.

Liability accrues under Section 2, 1993 Act.

johnnyskeleton

Maximilian wrote:

I think Suicide Pacts should be legally enforceable.

The problem with getting specific performance of a suicide pact is that "He who seeks equity must do equity" so there is an element of "you go first about it".

Maximilian

johnnyskeleton wrote:

The problem with getting specific performance of a suicide pact is that "He who seeks equity must do equity" so there is an element of "you go first about it".

On the other hand, damages wouldn't be an adequate remedy in my view.

johnnyskeleton

Maximilian wrote:

On the other hand, damages wouldn't be an adequate remedy in my view.

True, there's nothing quite like knowing that some randomer you met on the internet and entered into a suicide pact with is now dead. Money can't buy that.

A question that arises though is does the court have to supervise the specific performance of the contract?

Rhonda9000

johnnyskeleton wrote:

True, there's nothing quite like knowing that some randomer you met on the internet and entered into a suicide pact with is now dead. Money can't buy that.

A question that arises though is does the court have to supervise the specific performance of the contract?

I presume this is just being facetious. First of all the contract would have to be supported by consideration to be legally enforceable. A contract requiring the death of a person would fall on legality of purpose grounds.

johnnyskeleton

Rhonda9000 wrote:

I presume this is just being facetious.

Moi?

Rhonda9000

Aw Johnny, you're my favourite

Tom Young

...clears throat!

Aw Johnny, you're my favourite

Rhonda9000

Lol

hullaballoo

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