Girl who coerced suicide to face trial
TEXTS TO BOYFRIEND
BOSTON • A teenage Massachusetts girl who sent her boyfriend dozens of text messages encouraging him to kill himself and allegedly told him to “get back in” a truck filled with carbon monoxide fumes must stand trial for involuntary manslaughter, the state’s highest court ruled Friday.
The Supreme Judicial Court said a grand jury had probable cause to indict Michelle Carter, then 17, in the 2014 death of Conrad Roy III, 18.
Carter’s lawyer had argued her texts were free speech protected by the First Amendment and did not cause Roy to kill himself.
But the court, in a strongly worded decision, said the grand jury heard evidence suggesting Carter engaged in a “systematic campaign of coercion” that targeted Roy’s insecurities and her instruction to “get back in” his truck in the final moments of his life was a “direct, causal link” to his death.
“In sum, we conclude that there was probable cause to show that the coercive quality of the defendant’s verbal conduct overwhelmed whatever willpower the 18-year-old victim had to cope with his depression, and that but for the defendant’s admonishments, pressure, and instructions, the victim would not have gotten back into the truck and poisoned himself to death,” Justice Robert Cordy wrote for the court in the 7-0 ruling.
The case drew national attention after transcripts of text messages Carter sent Roy were released, showing her urging him to follow through on his plan to kill himself and chastising him when he expressed doubts.
“I thought you wanted to do this. The time is right and you’re ready, you just need to do it!” Carter wrote in one message.
“You can’t think about it. You just have to do it. You said you were gonna do it. Like I don’t get why you aren’t,” she wrote in another message.