Convicted of encouraging suicides, William Melchert-Dinkel faces sentencing
MINNEAPOLIS (CBS/AP) - Former Minnesota nurse William Melchert-Dinkel, convicted of aiding suicides by trolling Internet chat rooms and encouraging depressed people to kill themselves, could see little or no time behind bars when he is sentenced Wednesday.
William Melchert-Dinkel, 48, was convicted in March of two counts of aiding suicide in the deaths of an English man and a Canadian woman. Under state law, he faces a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison and a $30,000 fine for each count, but worksheets prepared by probation officers as part of the pre-sentencing report point to much less - and presume that a prison sentence would be stayed.
Rice County District Court Judge Thomas Neuville, who convicted Melchert-Dinkel in March, will be the one who decides the sentence after reading the worksheets and hearing the recommendations of prosecutors and defense attorneys and any comments from the victims' families.
Prosecutors say Melchert-Dinkel was obsessed with suicide and hanging and sought out potential victims online. They say he posed as a suicidal female nurse to win his victims' trust, then entered false suicide pacts and offered detailed instructions on how people could take their own lives.
Court documents say Melchert-Dinkel, a former nurse from the southern Minnesota town of Fairbault, told police he did it for the "thrill of the chase." He acknowledged participating in online chats about suicide with up to 20 people and entering into fake suicide pacts with about 10 people, five of whom he believed killed themselves.
Melchert-Dinkel declined a jury trial, leaving Neuville to decide whether he was guilty. He was convicted in the death of Mark Drybrough, 32, of Coventry, England, who hanged himself in 2005; and in the death of Nadia Kajouji, 18, of Brampton, Ontario, who jumped into a frozen river in 2008.
Defense attorney Terry Watkins doesn't dispute prosecutors' account but insists Melchert-Dinkel's activities were protected speech and did not rise to the level of a crime. Watkins plans to appeal the convictions.
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March 16, 2011 - William Melchert-Dinkel, ex-nurse, convicted of aiding suicides by targeting the weak online