Mass. High Court Upholds the Michelle Carter Ruling

The Massachusetts Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the involuntary manslaughter conviction of a woman who invited her boyfriend’s suicide during text messages. Michelle Carter might have to serve 15 months behind bars for the 2017 certainty that held her responsible for its July 2014 passing of Conrad Roy III, 18. 

After she urged her boyfriend, Roy to commit suicide according to testimony in her Bristol Juvenile Court trial in 2017 carter was 17 years old and was from a psychiatric hospital for about a month. Carter was 30 miles and about the phone together, listening as he inhaled carbon monoxide in a Fairhaven parking lot in his pickup truck, based on testimony. At one point, Roy told Carter he got out of this truck, but he was ordered by Carter back, prosecutors said. 

Carter was on the telephone with Roy as he inhaled carbon monoxide inside his Ford F-250 truck in Fairhaven, Massachusetts. At that time, Carter was about and 17 a month out of a psychiatric clinic. She opted against a jury and Bristol County Juvenile Court Judge Lawrence Moniz discovered that Carter caused Roy’s death by telling him to “get back in” his truck since it was filling with poisonous fumes. 

As supporting her conviction, the court cited buddies after the death of Roy Carter’s words. 

“As the suspect herself explained, and we replicate because of its importance,'[The victim’s] death is my own fault like frankly I might have stopped him I was on the telephone with him and he got out of the [truck] because it was working and he got scared and I f–king told him to get back,'” the court wrote in his decision. Her 15-month sentence was on hold until the judgment of the high court. 

“We are disappointed in the Court’s conclusion,” her lawyers said in a statement. “We continue to feel that Michelle Carter did not cause Conrad Roy’s tragic death and isn’t criminally responsible for his suicide.” “We will evaluate all legal options including a possible appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court,” the announcement said.