Judge Finds Woman Guilty for Urging Boyfriend to Commit Suicide Via Text Messages

A Massachusetts judge has found 20-year-old Michelle Carter guilty of involuntary manslaughter for encouraging the suicide of her then-18-year-old boyfriend, Conrad Roy III. Roy died in July 2014 after inhaling carbon monoxide in his pickup truck. Carter, who was 17 at the time, sent her boyfriend several text messages urging him to kill himself. According to the prosecutors, she berated him via text message and told him to get back in the car when he began to have second thoughts. “She called no one, and finally she did not issue a simple additional instruction: Get out of the truck,” said Bristol County Juvenile Court Judge Lawrence Moniz on Friday. The case sets a legal precedent regarding the criminality of encouraging someone to commit suicide. Carter faces as much as 20 years in prison and will be sentenced in early August.