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Online predator’s conviction for role in suicide of Canadian teen overturned

Online predator’s conviction for role in suicide of Canadian teen overturned

It's pretty hard not to see William Melchert-Dinkel as a predator.

The American man, who is a former nurse, lurked on Internet chat rooms devoted to suicide where, posing as a suicidal female nurse, he encouraged others to kill themselves. At least two people, including a Canadian teenager, actually did.

But Minnesota's top court ruled Wednesday that what Melchert-Dinkel did was not illegal because prosecutors didn't prove he actually assisted in the suicides. Encouragement was not enough.

"We conclude that the State may prosecute Melchert-Dinkel for assisting another in committing suicide, but not for encouraging or advising another to commit suicide," the state Supreme Court said in its ruling.

"Because the district court did not make a specific finding on whether Melchert-Dinkel, 51, assisted the victims’ suicides, we remand for further proceedings consistent with his opinion."

[ Related: Court reverses convictions of ex-nurse accused of aiding Canadian's suicide ]

The decision reverses a 2012 Appeal Court ruling that rejected Melchert-Dinkel's argument his activities were protected under the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment, guaranteeing the right to free speech.

It struck down part of the state's assisted-suicide law, finding that someone who only encourages or advises another to kill themselves is not "assisting" in the suicide.

The state now presumably will have to decide whether to retry the Faribault, Minn., resident based on narrower guidelines set out by the court, appeal this decision to a higher court, or drop the case.

Despite the ruling, the court left no doubt of its distaste for Melchert-Dinkel's actions.

The Associated Press said evidence submitted at his trial showed Melchert-Dinkel trolled the web looking for depressed people, then posing as a suicidal female nurse, faked compassion and offered step-by-step instructions on those he was chatting with so they could kill themselves.

Court documents revealed Melchert-Dinkel acknowledged chatting with up to 20 people and entering into fake suicide pacts with about half, AP said. He believed five actually killed themselves.

One of them was Nadia Kajouli, an 18-year-old Brampton, Ont., woman attending Carleton University in Ottawa. She jumped into the freezing Rideau River in the winter of 2008.

Police found computer records of lengthy email conversations with a woman who planned to kill herself and had encouraged Kajouli to do the same, CTV News reported at the time.

The other victim of Melchert-Dinkel's manipulation was Mark Drybrough, 32, of Coventry, England, who hanged himself in 2005.

[ Related: Right to die proponents welcome Supreme Court’s decision to revisit ban on assisted suicide ]

"In each case, he feigned caring and understanding to win the trust of the victims while encouraging each to hang themselves, falsely claiming that he would also commit suicide, and attempting to persuade them to let him watch the hangings via webcam," the Minnesota court said in its summation of the evidence.

In Drybrough's case, when the British man said he could not find anything high enough to tie a rope to hang himself, Melchert-Dinkel described how he could tie it to a doorknob and sling the rope over top of the door.

With Kajouli, Melchert-Dinkel responded to her query on how to commit suicide in a way that would look like an accident to family and friends. She planned to jump into the frozen river while wearing ice skates but Melchert-Dinkel tried to persuade her to hang herself. In the end, she followed through with her own plan.

Police in Minnesota latched onto Melchert-Dinkel after getting a tip that an online predator was encouraging people to commit suicide by hanging. He was convicted and sentenced to a year in jail, which he has yet to serve.

Prosecutors argued Melchert-Dinkel had lost his First Amendment protections because by pretending to be a suicidal woman, he fell under the exception of "speech integral to criminal conduct."

The court rejected that position, too.

"There is no dispute as to either the depravity of Melchert-Dinkel’s conduct or the fact that he lied to his victims," the court said in its ruling. "But to the extent the State argues that Melchert-Dinkel’s speech is unprotected simply because he was lying, the argument fails.

"A plurality of the [U.S.] Supreme Court has recognized that speech is not unprotected simply because the speaker knows that he or she is lying."

The ruling, if it stands, really does little to clarify the murky world of assisted suicide, which remains illegal in the U.S. and Canada.

The Toronto Star also reported Wednesday a prominent criminal lawyer who went to the assisted-suicide haven of Switzerland left a posthumous message calling on Parliament to change Canada's "unjust" law.

Edward Hung, who suffered from incurable ALS (aka Lou Gehrig's disease), said arranging "accompanied suicide" in Switzerland was "a great relief."

“However, my pride as a Canadian has somewhat diminished after having been on my knees begging to die in another country," he wrote. "This is not fair and I certainly do not wish it upon any of my fellow Canadians.”

Hung's letter echoes a similar plea last September from Dr. Donald Low, who recorded a YouTube video a few days before he died of brain cancer.

Low, a microbiologist known nationally for his leadership role during the 2003 SARS epidemic, described the humiliation of becoming increasingly helpless when there was "a simple way out."

"You drink a cocktail and you fall asleep and you do this in the presence of your family," Low said. "In countries where it’s legal, it’s quite easy to do. In countries where it’s not legal, it’s pretty well impossible.”