first amendment could set her free
MICHELLE CARTER WILL APPEAL SUICIDE TEXTING CONVICTION
Michelle Carter blew it yesterday.
Instead of spending the next 15 months in jail, coming to grips with why she taunted Conrad Roy into killing himself, Carter went home to a cocoon of family and friends who will no doubt assure her this was all a bad dream that will go away in time. It won’t. When Judge Lawrence Moniz ordered Carter to serve 15 months of a 2 1⁄2year sentence for involuntary manslaughter in a Bristol County courtroom, what he was actually giving her was a chance to grow up and understand what it means to assume responsibility for your actions.
It was obviously something Carter never did receive during her time in the sheltered confines of McLean Hospital. It was a dose of tough love.
But then, parents who pay a dogged defense lawyer like Joseph Cataldo expect him to keep their daughter out of jail. And they are not much interested in having their child grow up in a hurry and come to understand what taking responsibility means.
To study the blend of self-pity and boredom on Michelle Carter’s face in court yesterday was to realize she knew she wasn’t going to jail, no matter what the judge said.
And that is precisely the problem.
If Michelle Carter had accepted her punishment and gone to jail for the next 15 months, she would have at least accomplished two critical things.
She would have accepted responsibility for callously urging a vulnerable, distraught boy to “get back in” that truck and commit suicide.
And more importantly, she would have helped to ease the anguish of Conrad Roy’s family by taking ownership of her part in
his death.
Obviously, what neither Carter nor her parents could understand is that accepting the consequence of her action was really the shortest road to regaining something in the way of a normal life going forward.
Instead, she is now “free” to go about her life under the cloud of an appeals process that will likely drag on for a while. The death of Conrad Roy will continue to dog her, to haunt her, to color every aspect of her life, to inject itself into every conversation with friends and family.
If Carter’s lawyer can stretch out the process, as he will surely try, his client will cross the threshold into adulthood with a manslaughter charge hanging over her head.
How do you move forward with your life? How do you try to make amends? The answer is you don’t.
Judge Moniz sentenced one sour-faced girl to spend 15 months in jail then allowed her to walk out of the courtroom and go back home with her parents on the right of appeal.
And they will make the sad, but all too predictable, mistake of telling their little girl not to fret and worry, everything will be all right.
All Michelle Carter has to do is forget about Conrad Roy, the boy she told to “get back in” the truck.
Doing 15 months of penance would have given Michelle Carter what she walked away from yesterday — the chance to build a future.
The First Amendment and the winding road of the appellate process are the only things keeping Michelle Carter out of jail.
And the constitutional issue may be what sets her free forever.
Carter, who yesterday was sentenced to 2 1⁄ years 2 behind bars — with only 15 months to actually serve — was given a last-second reprieve by Judge Lawrence Moniz. He held off on the punishment at the behest of Carter’s attorneys who argued that she shouldn’t be jailed for a conviction that may not stick.
“This is a novel case involving speech,” said Joseph Cataldo, Carter’s lead attorney. “These are legitimate issues that are worthy of presentation to the appeals court.”
The crux of the argument is that Carter didn’t commit a crime when she convinced Conrad Roy III, through texts and phone calls, to get back in his truck as it filled with deadly carbon monoxide fumes. Her communications, according to Cataldo, were protected by the First Amendment.
“Massachusetts does not have an assisted-suicide — or an encouragement of suicide — law in place, and this is violative of the First Amendment,” Cataldo said outside court.
Some may remember that the Supreme Judicial Court already ruled on this case and allowed Carter’s involuntary manslaughter trial to move forward in 2016. However, the high court did not fully tackle the First Amendment ramifications that surround the case.
In his decision, former Justice Robert Cordy mentioned the First Amendment only three times — all in footnotes — and brushed over the idea that Carter’s speech may have been protected without a hefty analysis.
But other courts that have dug deeper into this thorny issue have come out differently. In Minnesota, for example, the state’s high court struck down a law that prohibited people from “encouraging” or “advising” suicide, finding that the statute violated the First Amendment.
“Speech in support of suicide, however distasteful, is an expression of a viewpoint on a matter of public concern, and, given current U.S. Supreme Court First Amendment jurisprudence, is therefore entitled to special protection as the ‘highest rung of the hierarchy of First Amendment values,’ ” the court wrote in its 2014 decision.
Cataldo has 30 days to file his notice of appeal, and from there the trial court record will be put together and a time frame will fall into place. It could take a year, or it could drag on longer. The SJC can, on its own, grab the appeal before the state Appeals Court hears it — a move that would show the high court is particularly interested in the case.
I think that will happen here. Two years ago, SJC Chief Justice Ralph Gants told me that his court wasn’t interested in calling legal “balls and strikes.” No, he said the SJC’s job is to set the “strike zone” and dictate clear precedent that other courts in the commonwealth need to follow.
This is one of those cases. In our evolving digital age, where we can communicate with a touch of a button, it’s important to outline when a text or call or tweet becomes criminal.
Yesterday, Bristol prosecutor Maryclare Flynn seemed to notice that Moniz was about to set Carter free pending her appeal and made a last-ditch effort to change his mind.
“This is not a suicide case,” she said. “This is not a First Amendment case.”
Maybe not, but now a high court will have to decide whether or not it’s both.