Inciting to Suicide

"Jump! Jump! screamed onlookers as a troubled youth threatened to leap from a twelfth-story hotel ledge in Albany, N.Y. "Jump! Jump! cried another mob last week as a jobless man set to dive off Manhattan's Brooklyn Bridge. Both would-be suicides were eventually talked down to safety, but not before hundreds of witnesses gaily exchanged bets on their fate whilte yowling such taunts as "What's the matter, ya yellow?"

Quite apart from their moral and spiritual indifference, people who make suicide a spectator sport may be charged with a serious crime. The police, who busied themselves with trying to move the mobs back, were apparently unaware of it, but New York State has two highly relevant laws. Section 2304 of the state penal law says: "A person who willfully, in any manner, advises, encourages, abets or assists another person in taking the latter's life, is guilty of manslaughter in the first degree." Section 2305 adds that incitement is a felony ever if the would-be suicide survives.

To nail a violator of these laws requires proof of willfulness. And those who cry "Jump!" might try to plead that it was all a joke. "But this is a serious business," warns a top New York prosecutor, "and the laws are tehre to be used."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.