Constitutionality of Statute Which Criminalizes Advising, Encouraging, or Assisting Another to Commit Suicide Under Review by Supreme Court

State v. Melchert-Dinkel, Minn.Ct.App., 7/17/2012, Review Granted, 10/24/2012.  This is the challenge to the statute, Minn.Stat. 609.215.1, which criminalizes advising, encouraging, or assisting another to commit suicide.  This slipped past me back in the Summer but the Minnesota Supreme Court granted review today.  Amicus are also lining up so it’s shaping up to be a big decision.  Here’s how the court of appeals described  the facts:

Mark Drybrough hanged himself in England in 2005, and Nadia Kajouji drowned herself in Canada three years later, both shortly after 46-year-old William Melchert-Dinkel, who knew that Drybrough and Kajouji were contemplating suicide, sent each a series of Internet messages from his home in Faribault, prodding them to kill themselves.  Melchert-Dinkel instructed Drybrough and Kajouji how to commit suicide by hanging, tried to persuade them to hang themselves, and convinced them that he was a distraught young woman who would commit suicide simultaneously with them or shortly afterward.

Mr. Melchert-Dinkel said that the First Amendment protected his internet messages and so the statute was unconstitutional, facially and as-applied.  The court of appeals concluded that the facial challenge failed because the speech here is speech integral to criminal conduct.  In harsh language, the court also rejects the as-applied challenge:

If the First Amendment does not protect a genuine conspiracy to steal someone else’s
property, how can it protect a fraudulent conspiracy to end someone else’s life? We are
confident that the Constitution does not immunize Melchert-Dinkel’s morbid, predatory
behavior simply because it appears in the form of written words.