KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Tennessee Rep. Ryan Williams is drafting a bill to criminalize “coercive suicide” to include forms of digital communication.
Currently, coerced suicide in Tennessee is not illegal, meaning no statute explicitly criminalizes assistance through speech or digital forms of communication. There is a law on the books that makes it illegal for someone to assist another person in committing suicide. However, this gets murky when digital communication is involved.
“My desire is to find a way to thread the needle in our assisted suicide statute in Tennessee by adopting a coercive suicide statute in Tennessee,” Williams said. “It wouldn’t prevent someone from being able to do this, but it would allow the courts to opine with the District Attorney’s Office, and bring charges that are more consistent with what we believe are the egregious nature of what this gentleman did to this family, and consequently, to Grace Anne.”…