INQUISITR.COM / News & Politics

Michelle Carter, Teen Who Encouraged Her Friend To Commit Suicide, To Face Trial For Manslaughter

By Aaron Homer
Published on: 06:40 PST, Jul 1, 2016

Michelle Carter, the Massachusetts woman who, as a teenager, encouraged her friend Conrad Roy III to commit suicide, will stand trial for manslaughter, the Associated Press is reporting.

The Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled Friday that Carter must stand trial for involuntary manslaughter, over the objections of her attorneys, who claimed that the teenager’s texts were protected free speech under the First Amendment.

Back in July 2014, according to this Inquisitr report, Conrad Roy III committed suicide in the parking lot of a Fairfield, Massachusetts, K-Mart by carbon monoxide poisoning.

Investigators found that Conrad had exchanged over a thousand text messages with Carter. Some of those text message conversations took place as Conrad was in the very act of taking his own life.

Fairhaven police Detective Scott Gordon said that Conrad attempted to get out of his truck to abort the suicide attempt, but Carter encouraged him to get back in and finish the job.

“Not only did Conrad tell Carter in several of his texts prior to his death that he was scared and didn’t want to leave his family, she continued to encourage him to take his own life, and when he actually started to carry out the act, he got scared again and exited his truck, but instead of telling him to stay out of the truck … Carter told him to ‘get back in.'”

The two teens had met about two years earlier when both of their families were visiting Florida. Although they only lived about 50 miles apart back home in Massachusetts, their “relationship,” such as it was, consisted almost entirely of phone calls and text messages. At the time of Conrad’s death, they hadn’t seen each other in person in over a year.

Carter’s motives for encouraging her friend to commit suicide remain unclear. However, her actions after Conrad’s death seem to indicate that she enjoyed the attention that came with being the friend of a teen suicide victim. She used social media to spread awareness of teen suicide and referred to Conrad as her “angel.” She even organized a charity softball tournament and raised over $2,000 for teen suicide prevention.

Carter was arrested and charged with manslaughter in February 2015.

Last week, the Inquisitr reported that Carter might very well have walked away from all charges, and gotten off scot-free, due to a technicality. As the Massachusetts Supreme Court considered her lawyers’ requests to the charges against her dropped, Michelle herself was quickly approaching her 20th birthday. Had the court failed to act before then, Carter would have “aged out” of the Massachusetts juvenile justice system and could not have faced any criminal charges.

In a unanimous decision, the court ruled that there is sufficient evidence that Carter’s texts to Roy contributed to his death, and thus, she deserves to stand trial.

“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 eighteen 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.”

Conrad’s grandfather, Conrad Roy Sr., praised the court for its decision.

“I hope justice will be served.”

As of this writing, no trial date has been set.

Do you believe that Michelle Carter bears criminal responsibility for Conrad Roy’s suicide?

[Photo by John Wilcox/The Boston Herald via Pool/AP Images]

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