{"id":20239,"date":"2016-04-08T08:03:14","date_gmt":"2016-04-08T15:03:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/court-hears-case-of-teen-who-sent-beau-texts-urging-suicide\/"},"modified":"2016-04-08T08:03:14","modified_gmt":"2016-04-08T15:03:14","slug":"court-hears-case-of-teen-who-sent-beau-texts-urging-suicide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/court-hears-case-of-teen-who-sent-beau-texts-urging-suicide\/","title":{"rendered":"Court hears case of teen who sent beau texts urging suicide"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOSTON<\/strong> \u2014 Dozens of text messages that a teenage girl sent to her boyfriend that encouraged him to kill himself were just words and do not constitute a crime, her lawyer told the state\u2019s highest court Thursday.<\/p>\n

But a prosecutor argued that Michelle Carter pressured Conrad Roy III for weeks to end his life and engaged in \u201cemotional manipulation\u201d of a vulnerable teen who had struggled with depression and previously attempted suicide.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Judicial Court heard arguments in Carter\u2019s appeal of a juvenile court judge\u2019s refusal to dismiss the manslaughter charge stemming from Roy\u2019s 2014 death.<\/p>\n

The justices made it clear they were struggling with whether Carter\u2019s actions met the definition of manslaughter, peppering both side with questions about exactly what she did to encourage or assist Roy\u2019s suicide.<\/p>\n

Justice Robert Cordy questioned Assistant District Attorney Shoshana Stern about what he called the \u201c$100,000 question\u201d in the case: \u201cWhen did this cross the line \u2014 when did these words cross the line?\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to the many text messages encouraging Roy to kill himself, Stern said, Carter also spoke on the phone with him while he was in his truck inhaling carbon monoxide fumes.<\/p>\n

When Roy got out of his truck, she told him to \u201cget back in,\u201d Stern said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think what we can say that we know is that she was way over the line when she told him to get back in the truck,\u201d Stern said.<\/p>\n

But Carter\u2019s attorney Dana Curhan said Roy was determined to take his own life. He said Carter repeatedly tried to talk him out of it but finally gave up about two weeks before his death.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven when she said, \u2018get back in the truck,\u2019 that was not the proximate event that resulted in his death,\u201d Curhan said.<\/p>\n

Roy got back in his truck and waited until the fumes overcame him, Curhan said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe undisputed evidence is that Mr. Roy inflicted the harm,\u201d Curhan said.<\/p>\n

Carter was 17 and Roy was 18 when he died in 2014. They had met in Florida two years earlier while visiting relatives. They kept in touch mostly through texts and emails when they both returned to their homes in Massachusetts \u2014 about 50 miles apart. They hadn\u2019t seen each other in more than a year before Roy\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t think about it. You just have to do it. You said you were gonna do it. Like I don\u2019t get why you aren\u2019t,\u201d Carter wrote to Roy the day of his death.<\/p>\n

Roy\u2019s body was found in his pickup truck in Fairhaven. Police found a gasoline-operated water pump in the back seat.<\/p>\n

Carter was charged as a youthful offender, which makes her eligible for a sentence of up to 20 years in prison if convicted of manslaughter.<\/p>\n

Attorney Joseph Cataldo, who also represents Carter, said after the hearing that prosecutors are attempting to criminalize Carter\u2019s free speech in the case when there is no law against encouraging or assisting suicide in Massachusetts. Thirty-nine states have such laws.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a case that should have even been brought,\u201d Cataldo said.<\/p>\n

The court gave no indication on when it would rule.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BOSTON \u2014 Dozens of text messages that a teenage girl sent to her boyfriend that encouraged him to kill himself were just words and do not constitute a crime, her lawyer told the state\u2019s highest court Thursday. But a prosecutor argued that Michelle Carter pressured Conrad Roy III for weeks to end his life and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-20239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20239\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20239"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=20239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}