The surprise verdict of guilty in the Michelle Carter texting and suicide case in a Massachusetts courtroom has far-reaching implications for how we think about suicide, personal responsibility and culpability, free speech, and our duty as citizens to one another, particularly those on the brink of suicide. As a psychologist and psychoanalyst who works with suicidal patients, and a researcher who studies suicide, the verdict leaves me deeply ambivalent. Words are the tools of my trade, and according to Judge Moniz, the wrong words, to the wrong person, at the wrong time can be equated with involuntary manslaughter.
