Today in Massachusetts,
a trial began over the death of an 18-year-old man who committed suicide in 2014,
after being encouraged to end his life by his then-girlfriend, Michelle Carter.
Carter now faces jail time for involuntary manslaughter,
in a type of case that rarely goes to trial.
But in Missouri,
prosecutors recently charged another woman in an even more unusual suicide case.
Michael Moynihan reports.
— On December 21st,
17-year-old Kenneth Suttner placed a series of notes in his bedroom
and disappeared into the woods behind his parents’ house.
— ...Suttner died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound...
— In Glasgow, Missouri,
a town of barely 1,000 people,
it didn't take long for the rumor mill to start churning:
whispers that at school and work, Suttner had been intensely bullied.
The police began investigating.
A month after Suttner's death,
a young woman was led away in handcuffs,
and confronted with an unprecedented charge:
criminal responsibility for another person's suicide.
— We had an early dismissal that day.
We had emergency faculty meetings.
We took our kids, grade level by grade level,
walked them through as much as we could about the tragedy.
— Mike Reynolds is the Glasgow High School superintendent...
— Hi, guys.
How are ya?
— ...and also the bus driver for this small K-through-12 school.
With only 300 students,
Reynolds has a personal relationship with almost all of the kids—
including Kenny Suttner.
— Kenny was a polite, sweet young man.
Had a good sense of humor, outgoing.
The older he got, the more he got involved in things.
— Frank Flaspohler was one of the first people called to the scene the night Kenny committed suicide.
He’s been the Howard County coroner for 28 years.
— It looked pretty obvious that it was a suicide.
I had a meeting with the sheriff’s department,
and at that meeting we talked about what some of the neighbors had said,
what the suicide notes looked like,
and that’s when we kinda got the feeling that it was—
could have been caused by bullying.
When I sat down and read all the suicide notes, I cried.
— In one note, Suttner wrote:
“It’s just I can’t do this anymore.”
“I don’t fit in. It will be a better place once I’m gone.”
In another:
“I’m not crazy. It’s just I shouldn’t be here.”
“No one likes me. I have no future.”
“I’m a fat ass and no one likes a fat ass.”
“I really love you guys. It’s my choice. Respect it.”
— This is bullying so bad that a kid, a 17-year-old boy, took his life.
We need to do something to prevent that from happening again.
— Flaspohler invoked a power granted to him by the state of Missouri:
— He convened something called a coroner’s inquest.
According to Missouri law,
a coroner's inquest can be used to determine, quote, “how and by whom the deceased died.”
But the cause of Kenny’s death isn’t in dispute,
so Flaspohler interpreted the law in a unique way:
he’d try to determine the psychological cause of Kenny’s death.
The inquest—
which isn’t a trial, but a public hearing that can recommend criminal charges—
had a six-person jury and a special prosecutor.
Kenny’s suicide and the subsequent investigation had transfixed,
and divided,
the community.
— And this is entirely up to you, right?
This is entirely your decision.
— Yes, that is correct.
— The inquest quickly zeroed in on Harley Branham,
Kenny’s manager at the local Dairy Queen.
Witnesses accused Harley of frequently berating Kenny,
once throwing a hamburger at him,
and regularly making him get on his stomach and clean under chairs and an ice cream machine.
A friend claimed that Kenny once said Harley, quote, “made him want to kill himself.”
But another testified that she, quote, “didn’t think anything” of such comments,
dismissing them as the type of hyperbole one often heard at work.
— And was Kenny calling out people in the notes that had been his tormentors?
— No, no.
— So he didn’t mention the work incidents in the notes?
— No.
— Harley, for her part, testified that she hadn’t ever mistreated Kenny at work,
and said that if she’d insulted him, it was just as a joke.
But the testimony of the other witnesses was enough
to convince the jury that Harley Branham was the “principal cause of” Kenny’s death.
The special prosecutor charged Harley with a felony:
involuntary manslaughter,
something that could result in four years in prison.
The coroner’s inquest didn’t allow Harley legal representation.
Jeff Hilbrenner is now Harley’s lawyer:
— In this situation, there's simply just one version of facts told, one story.
And so, no witness was subject to cross-examination.
No witness was subject to further inquiry—
how do you know these things?
When these things occur?
Who else was present?
Who else could have witnessed these things?
So I think that the six jurors there saw a set of facts,
and saw no criticism of those facts.
— But it isn’t just the process of charging Harley that bothers Hilbrenner,
it’s the very premise that one person can be criminally liable for a suicide.
While people have been prosecuted for directly inciting others to kill themselves,
VICE News has been unable to find a single other case
where a defendant was held criminally liable for what amounts to... being mean.
— Our system requires that a jury not convict someone
because they might have bullied someone before,
no matter what the charge is,
or convict someone because they were a mean person.
— It's not illegal to be mean to someone, is basically what you’re saying?
— Well essentially no, it’s not illegal to be a jerk.
We are disputing these facts,
but let's assume Harley was mean to this guy at work.
How does that get us to being responsible for him,
you know, ultimately taking his own life?
— The inquest also went after the Glasgow public school system.
And Reynolds says that, since the inquest, the school has received a steady stream of hate mail.
— The aftermath and the reality is, here,
it has done a lot of damage to our school community and our town.
— Critics of the inquest told us that a singular focus on bullying
ignored a far more complex psychological portrait of Kenny.
In the notes Kenny wrote the night he killed himself,
for instance, he made an unexplained reference to something that had happened “last night.”
He also wrote,
quote, “Please forgive me for my sin I’ve done.”
Flaspohler maintains that the inquest was a fact-finding mission and a search for justice.
Jeff Hilbrenner thinks the inquest unfairly targeted his client,
and that its outcome was preordained.
— If Harley is vindicated in a court of law,
is there long-term damage either way?
— Well, I mean, you used the word “vindication.”
And what does that really mean?
The reality is, she’s still gonna deal with
anytime or her a friend anyone ever puts her name into a search engine.
There’s gonna be dozens and dozens of things
describing Harley in a way that I don't think is fair.
— Harley’s life has changed forever.
What do you think about that?
— Okay.
If I had to do it all over again, would I do it?
Yes.
Now, Harley’s life is changed?
Did I make it change,
or did she make it change when she was doing the bullying?
So who do we blame for “her life changed”?
— Bullies typically don’t end up in shackles though, do they?
— Well, I suppose not, so.