Suicide by economic crisis

[arielilane]

A good site to follow for updates on the case (includes the beginning of Mr. Marin's troubles in 2009 as well).

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/relat...Michael+Marin/

[Nova]

Originally Posted by Jack

Nova I don't follow your reasoning. Desperate suicides don't plan and calculate their actions.

A grown man committing suicide publicly because he didn't get the verdict he wanted is incredibly selfish. Not surprising though, considering that he had just been convicted of a crime which was also selfish.

How is it not selfish to commit suicide publicly, in front of people who will live the rest of their lives wondering how they didn't see what was going on right before their eyes? Do you think that isn't going to affect them?

How is it not selfish to put your family through not only seeing you die right before them but then have to relive it for days while it is splashed all over the news? And to leave that legacy to your grandchildren. Is that okay to do just because you didn't get what you wanted?

How is it not selfish to kill yourself during a court proceeding where the judge/jurors who were doing their civic duty will now live with the thought that their decision caused a man to take his own life? What about that is fair?

This man has by his own actions caused a great deal of stress for a lot of people. He cared nothing for them and their well being, only for himself and what he wanted. That is selfishness in it's purest form.

All good points, Jack, and I didn't mean to nominate Marin for Humanitarian of the Year.

But I thought we were talking about the act of suicide itself. Marin waited for the verdict and one way to view that is he waited until his situation was absolutely desperate before he took action.

Once the verdict was read, I'm assuming Marin had a finite number of minutes before the strip search that greets all new inmates upon arrival in the System. (I suppose it's possible he might have been granted bail during an appeal, but that seems less and less common nowadays.) Yes, it would have been nice if he could have excused himself and gone to the men's room, but I doubt he had that option once the verdict was read.

To me, prison sounds awful enough that I don't find it unreasonable that a 50-something (essentially my age) man would prefer death to 16 years Inside. Of course, Marin's own behavior brought him to desperation, but, again, I thought we were talking about the suicide. If poison was his means of choice, he may very well have taken his last opportunity.

[jjenny]

I don't see why the judge and jury should blame themselves, because I don't see anybody arguing that this man was not guilty of a crime he was convicted of. But I also understand why he allegedly did what he did. 16 years is a lot for a man his age. What did he have to look forward to, while in prison?
And they were going to take him to jail and search him, so he had to act fast once the verdict was read.

[michmi]

The bottom line here is if he was judged NOT guilty, he wouldn't have taken whatever it was.

This is a person who had a lot of things and a lot of adventures and hated losing it all and ending up in prison. He might have been a grand adventurer, but in jail...well he wasn't going to command any sort of respect at all. He knew he couldn't cut it and offed himself.

It's less about economic issues than it is about avoiding something he didn't want to do.

[Karmady]

Originally Posted by michmi

The bottom line here is if he was judged NOT guilty, he wouldn't have taken whatever it was.

This is a person who had a lot of things and a lot of adventures and hated losing it all and ending up in prison. He might have been a grand adventurer, but in jail...well he wasn't going to command any sort of respect at all. He knew he couldn't cut it and offed himself.

It's less about economic issues than it is about avoiding something he didn't want to do.

I'm guessing he didn't want to die either -- actually, I'd bet on it. Especially that way. So he chose one extremely unpleasant consequence over another. I'm not upset that he "got away" with not having to serve a prison sentence by killing himself.

And who knows, maybe he wasn't guilty at all. Every other person you meet in AZ is in foreclosure. It's no big deal anymore. Hundreds of thousands of people of all walks of life have just walked away. In fact, most high-end buyers who are business savvy are doing it in droves. It just makes better sense than committing a felony. Especially if the insurance proceeds are going to the lenders on an interest only loan, as it seems was the case here. Idk, the whole thing just seems a little off to me. One thing I noticed that the newtimes didn't ask is about the phone books and the low-priced box fillers. I wonder what his explanation for that was...

[BuzzieCat]

Originally Posted by Karmady

I'm guessing he didn't want to die either -- actually, I'd bet on it. Especially that way. So he chose one extremely unpleasant consequence over another. I'm not upset that he "got away" with not having to serve a prison sentence by killing himself.

And who knows, maybe he wasn't guilty at all. Every other person you meet in AZ is in foreclosure. It's no big deal anymore. Hundreds of thousands of people of all walks of life have just walked away. In fact, most high-end buyers who are business savvy are doing it in droves. It just makes better sense than committing a felony. Especially if the insurance proceeds are going to the lenders on an interest only loan, as it seems was the case here. Idk, the whole thing just seems a little off to me. One thing I noticed that the newtimes didn't ask is about the phone books and the low-priced box fillers. I wonder what his explanation for that was...

Didn't he claim he was moving in a bunch of his stuff when the fire happened? I bet he hoped the phone books would burn everything up faster and the boxes would be mostly burned but perhaps make it look like he was in fact moving in. Hoping that if it looked like he was moving in, authorities would be less likely to suspect he'd purposely torched the place?

The psychology of this guy is fascinating. I wish he'd had a psych eval that we could read. To me his method of killing himself, if he really took poison, goes along with all his other daredevil actions. Climbing Mt. Everest, making a shady-looking deal when he bought his house, setting his house on fire and escaping in a wet suit, etc.

[Kat]

http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/val...ly_took_cy.php

Michael Marin probably popped a cyanide pill after a jury handed down a guilty verdict against him in his arson case, according to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio

Arpaio says Marin ordered a canister of sodium cyanide off the Internet in 2011, before the trial, and had it sent by Fed-Ex straight to his doorstep.

I'm still waiting for the tox reports though.

[BuzzieCat]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...n_1710731.html

The Maricopa County medical examiner's office toxicology tests showed Michael Marin, 53, had the poison in his system.