Woman who urged her boyfriend to commit suicide could spend 15 months behind bars

A Massachusetts judge Thursday ruled that a woman who urged her boyfriend to commit suicide should spend 15 months behind bars, in a case whose lurid details and First Amendment implications drew national attention, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Michelle Carter, 20 years old, was found guilty in June in the 2014 death of her boyfriend, who killed himself after she sent him a string of text messages over days urging him to end his life. Ms. Carter was 17 at the time.

For now, Ms. Carter remains free. At a sentencing hearing in Fall River, Mass., Bristol County Juvenile Court Judge Lawrence Moniz agreed to postpone confinement while her lawyer appealed her conviction.

The actual sentence handed down by Judge Moniz was 2.5 years, but he said Ms. Carter should spend only 15 months of it in prison, then be released on probation.

Prosecutors had asked that Ms. Carter serve at least seven years behind bars, and they opposed any stay of the sentence. “While we are certainly disappointed that the judge chose to stay the sentence, we remain, as we always have, steadfast in our belief that Michelle Carter…needs to be held accountable,” Bristol County assistant district attorney Maryclare Flynn said in a statement.

Ms. Carter, who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter, was miles away when 18-year-old Conrad Roy III sat in his truck in a parking lot in Fairhaven, Mass., inhaling carbon monoxide.

“You’re just making it harder on yourself by pushing it off, you just have to do it,” she texted him a day before he was found dead, according to court papers. “If u don’t do it now you’re never gonna do it.”

In other messages, she sought to reassure Mr. Roy that his family would understand why he took his life and would “get over it.”

She also helped him figure out the method for committing suicide–using a gasoline-powered generator to pump lethal fumes into his truck. Evidence also emerged that she knew her boyfriend had been treated for mental illness and had previously attempted to kill himself.

“I could have stopped him I was on the phone with him and he got out of the [truck] because it was working and he got scared and I…told him to get back in,” read a text message Ms. Carter sent to a friend after Mr. Roy died, according to court records.

Ms. Carter’s attorney, Joseph Cataldo, had argued that she shouldn’t go to prison for sending texts and that she couldn’t have been expected to know that her conduct was potentially prosecutable.

In court Thursday, her lawyer told the judge that the case raised novel questions about speech rights and assisted-suicide law and said he was prepared to pursue appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Prosecutors said Ms. Carter acted with cold-blooded intent. “This is not an assisted-suicide case. This is not a First Amendment case,” Ms. Flynn said at the hearing Thursday.

In determining her punishment, Judge Moniz said he considered Ms. Carter’s age and her potential for rehabilitation.

“I am satisfied that she is mindful of the actions for which she now stands convicted,” the judge said.

Last year, the highest court in Massachusetts ruled that Ms. Carter should face trial. Unlike some states, Massachusetts doesn’t specifically make it a crime to encourage another person to commit suicide. The state defines involuntary manslaughter as the “unlawful killing that was unintentionally caused as the result of the defendants’ wanton or reckless conduct.”

Neither Ms. Carter’s attorney nor a spokesman for the Bristol County district attorney’s office could immediately be reached for comment.