Unpopular opinion: Michelle Carter got a fair sentence

My unpopular opinion of the day: Michelle Carter was fairly sentenced, and perhaps shouldn't serve any time at all.

https://peopledotcom.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/michelle-carter19.jpg?w=2000&h=1333

You probably don't know her by name, but I guarantee you have heard her story. She is the girl from Massachusetts who was convicted of manslaughter for texting her boyfriend as he killed himself, encouraging, and even demanding, that he complete his attempt. 

The prosecution and media presented her as an attention whore who wanted to be the poor girl who's boyfriend killed himself. She just wanted all eyes on her. 

Even Matt Walsh, who I generally admire for his calculation and insight had these harsh words to say: 

Screenshot from Facebook

I heard her story and also thought she was a terrible person. I laughed at memes criticizing her appearance. I ranted about her sentence; it was nowhere near harsh enough. 

Then a friend posted this article. It is the first in a series of articles from Dr. Peter Breggin-- the last installment is forthcoming. He was the psychiatrist that took Michelle's case, and he presents an incredibly different picture than the one we all heard. 

The public knows Michelle as a self-centered "mean girl" who texted a poor boy to death. Dr. Breggin, however, begins by describing her as her community knew her: a girl who deeply cared about her peers and family, who was a joy to be around, and was well loved. 

At the age of 14, after two unexpected family deaths, she was prescribed an adult dose of Prozac, despite being in the lowest 2% of weight for her age. SSRIs (selective seratonin uptake inhibitors, here's the wiki page, they are pretty neat) are known to have the potential for severe side effects, and especially strong side effects in children. Have you ever caught the fine print of the anti-depressant commercials where they say that they may cause suicidal feelings? Yeah. Michelle developed pretty much every nasty side effect you could get. 

Her boyfriend, Conrad, who she met only four times total, was also on an SSRI, and also had horrible side effects. Dr. Breggin shared some of their IMs where they discussed negative feelings, hallucinations, nightmares, their beliefs that they were destined for Hell and other extremely demonic thoughts and visions, and their general despair. 

I have yet to see excerpts from the transcript of the final ten days of Conrad's life, when she began to influence him to kill himself, and I'm not sure I want to, but Dr. Breggin assures his readers that it was only after major emotional trauma alongside her long distance boyfriend, and under the influence of heavy doses of anti-depressants. He describes her actions as being under the influence of "involuntary intoxication".

Wow. 

That is a far cry from a cold-hearted drama queen who just wants attention. 

What she did was so wrong, so evil, and she should have to face the consequences. But she was sentenced by the public with such a limited amount of information. Good lord, you think after 2016 we would have learned to take CNN with a couple heaping tablespoons of salt! The prosecution did an excellent job of painting her as a "deranged sociopath", knowing full well that most of us would just shake our heads, feel superior, discuss the moral decline of society, ignore Real News (for lack of a better term) for a few days, and then forget about it. 

Even now, the DA is attempting to silence Dr. Breggin. Who knows why, if they are trying to cover the pharmaceutical companies butts (personally, I think the real story is the over-medication of our children), or if the whole story is a distraction from something else, or what. But the fact remains that we as a whole made an unfair judgment on Michelle and need to look at why. 

The conservative bloggers were terrified that it would be a furthering of "hate speech" precedents. That a person (not that they should, anyways) would be put in jail for attempted murder if they said, "drop dead" to someone who ticked them off.  

Now I understand that we are all scared of the astonishing number of liberties and freedoms that we are losing. But that does not give us the right to behave like this. The whole idea of our liberties and rights is that they are God-given. One would hope that in acknowledgement of that gift, we use these liberties to behave more like Him, and not to use them to wallow in our pride. 

AMDG