MOSCOW, March 20 (RAPSI, Ingrid Burke) - Distasteful as it may be, speech encouraging or advising another to commit suicide is entitled to free-speech protection under the First Amendment of the US Constitution, Minnesota’s highest court held Thursday.

Finding that the state’s assisted suicide law curtailed free-speech rights by prohibiting such advice and encouragement, the Supreme Court of Minnesota ordered a rewording of the law and remanded for fresh proceedings the case of a man convicted under its former language.

Posing as a young female nurse, William Francis Melchert-Dinkel encouraged depressed individuals he met through suicide websites to hang themselves, and to allow him to watch their demise via webcam.

When initially confronted by law enforcement authorities, Melchert-Dinkel blamed his own daughters before eventually coming clean.

Court records reflect that he confessed during a police interview in 2009 to having asked between 15 and 20 people to record their suicides via webcam, and to having forged approximately 10 suicide pacts. Of those, none agreed to record their deaths, but Melchert-Dinkel predicted that about five may have ended their lives after entering into pacts with him.

His prosecution centered on two suicides.

Mark Drybrough, 32, had suffered from physical and mental health problems throughout his life. Posing as a female nurse, Melchert-Dinkel, reached out to Drybrough after the latter sought out information on the logistics of hanging oneself. After developing camaraderie with the fictional nurse, Drybrough hanged himself in July 2005.

In March 2008, 19-year-old Nadia Kajouji turned to the internet for advice on quick, reliable suicide methods that would make her death appear to her loved ones to have been accidental.

Shortly thereafter, posing as a different female nurse, Melchert-Dinkel advised Kajouji to hang herself. Kajouji devised an elaborate plan to jump off a bridge into a frozen river while wearing ice skates. Melchert-Dinkel’s fictional nurse continued to encourage hanging to the very end, and vowed to commit suicide the day after Kajouji.

Kajouji disappeared several days later, after confirming her plan with Melchert-Dinkel. Her body was discovered six weeks later, still wearing ice skates.

At the time, he told police that though he had never actually intended to take his own life, he was obsessed with suicide and death. He realized in retrospect that encouraging self-harm had been “morally, ethically, [and] legally” wrong of him.

Melchert-Dinkel was charged with two counts of urging suicide. He was convicted by a District Court, despite his objections that the relevant state law violated his right to free speech. The conviction was upheld on appeal before making its way to the state’s highest court.

The following is the text  of the relevant state law: “Whoever intentionally advises, encourages, or assists another in taking the other's own life may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than 15 years or to payment of a fine of not more than $30,000, or both.”

The Supreme Court found that the law’s prohibition of suicide advice and encouragement violates the right to free speech as guaranteed by the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

The court reasoned that “advise” and “encourage” are broad terms that relate generally to speech that is supportive, or that rallies courage. Because the terms are not narrowly defined within the context of the law, they cannot pass muster to a constitutional challenge.

“Speech in support of suicide, however distasteful, is an expression of a viewpoint on a matter of public concern, and… is therefore entitled to special protection as the highest rung of the hierarchy of First Amendment values,” the court opined, referencing US Supreme Court case law.

On the other hand, the law’s prohibition of assisting in the act of another’s suicide does not unconstitutionally curtail free speech rights.

Accordingly, the court ordered the terms “advises” and “encourages” to be struck from the law’s text.

As the district court had found specifically that Melchert-Dinkel “intentionally advised and encouraged” the suicides of Drybrough and Kajouji, the conviction was reversed and the case was remanded to the district court for fresh proceedings in light of the Supreme Court’s decision.