‘ENCOURAGING SUICIDE WITH WORDS ALONE’
Carter’s team claims conviction violates Amendments
The new high-powered defense team representing Michelle Carter argues that “words alone” can’t kill in their pitch to the state’s highest court — an appeal claiming her involuntary manslaughter conviction is unconstitutional and violates both state and federal law.
“(T)his appeal presents novel questions of constitutional and criminal law,” Carter’s attorneys wrote in an appeal to the Supreme Judicial Court, filed Feb. 5. “It will set precedent for who may be prosecuted for encouraging suicide with words alone.”
Carter was given a 2 1⁄2-year jail sentence, with only 15 months to serve, last summer after Judge Lawrence Moniz found her responsible for Conrad Roy III’s July 2014 suicide. Bristol prosecutors presented evidence convincing Moniz at a bench trial that Carter encouraged Roy to kill himself through texts and phone calls and told him to “get back in” his truck as it filled with deadly carbon monoxide fumes.
Carter has not been in jail since sentencing because Moniz granted a defense motion that allowed her to remain free until all of her state court appeals were exhausted.
“Carter is the first defendant to have been convicted of killing a person who took his own life, even though she neither provided the fatal means nor was present when the suicide occurred,” Carter’s attorneys wrote.
The Herald first reported that Carter’s team now includes former federal judge Nancy Gertner; William Fick, who represented convicted marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in his trial; and Daniel Marx.
Joseph Cataldo and Cory Madera, Carter’s defense team at the trial level, will continue representing her in the appeal.
Carter’s new defense team argues to the SJC that it should take the case because Moniz’s verdict creates a veritable legal minefield. They argue that convicting a defendant of involuntary manslaughter for encouraging someone to kill themself “with words alone” violates the First and Fifth Amendments.
They added that Moniz convicted her under a form of involuntary manslaughter that was not in the indictment.
They also say Carter was improperly charged as a youthful offender rather than as a juvenile because, as required by state law, there was “no evidence that Carter ‘inflicted’ any harm on Roy.”
Bristol prosecutors, in response to Carter’s petition, argue that Moniz applied the involuntary manslaughter law correctly. Prosecutor Shoshana E. Stern also wrote that Carter was properly charged under the youthful offender statute and that the SJC already addressed that issue when it first took up Carter’s case in 2016.
All documents regarding Carter’s appeal were initially impounded by the Massachusetts Appeals Court. However, after a Herald inquiry into the case, the SJC Clerk’s Office determined that portions of the appeal should have been public and released them yesterday.
‘It will set precendent for who may be prosecuted for encouraging suicide with words alone.’ — Carter’s attorneys in an appeal to the Supreme Judicial Court