A Massachusetts woman convicted of involuntary manslaughter because of text messages that cajoled her 18-year-old friend to commit suicide was sentenced Thursday to serve 15 months in jail.
Michelle Carter, now 20, faced a maximum 20-year prison term. Her unusual prosecution was closely watched, and it occurred in a state that has no law forbidding people from encouraging suicide. But the authorities—including a Bristol County judge—concluded that in 2014 Carter sent Conrad Roy text messages that wantonly and recklessly caused him to poison himself in a car with carbon monoxide. She was 17 years old at the time.
Judge Lawrence Moniz, who presided over the week-long, non-jury trial in June, issued the sentence in a packed courtroom in Taunton Trial Court, where Carter was tried as a juvenile. Noting that the prosecution was novel, Moniz stayed enforcement of any jail time until Carter exhausts her appeals in state court.
Overall, Moniz issued a 2.5-year term but said the defendant should serve only 15 months at the Bristol County House of Correction. He suspended the remainder of the entire sentence.
“This is an issue worthy of presentation to the appellate court,” the judge said from the bench. “I don’t know what the appeals court will do.”
Moniz, who said he balanced rehabilitation and punishment when formulating his sentence, called the case “a tragedy for two families.”
Defense attorneys maintained that the text messages were protected speech under the First Amendment and that the boy had planned to commit suicide regardless of Carter’s cajoling. However, the state’s top court had previously ruled against her, paving the way for the trial in which thousands of text messages and other communications between the two were admitted as evidence.