Michelle Carter.Photo: AP/REX/Shutterstock
Michelle Carterand her attorneys felt seven months behind bars was more than enough time to serve after a judgefound her guilty of involuntary manslaughterfor not halting the suicide of the teen boyfriend she’d encouraged via text to kill himself.
On Thursday, she asked the Massachusetts parole board for early release in a closed-door hearing.
Felix Browne, a spokesman for the state Executive Office of Public Safety and Security (which oversees the parole board), tells PEOPLE that Carter may not receive an answer for at least 2-3 days. “I know they heard from her, but I’m not sure which family members were there as it was a closed-door hearing,” he says.
There is no deadline for the board’s decision.
Carter, 22, wassentenced to 15 months in jailfor her role in the death of 18-year-old Conrad Roy III, who was found dead from carbon monoxide poisoning in his pickup truck on July 13, 2014, in the parking lot of a Fairhaven Kmart.
In hundreds of texts and statements that came to light after Roy’s suicide, Carter, who was 17 when Roy died, was revealed to have pushed him to go through with the act. The judge who found her guilty cited her written admission to a friend that she told Roy to “get back in” the truck after he stepped out and shared his last-minute fears in a call to Carter before he died.
Roy Family
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Both teens had struggled with depression, and Roy had made previous attempts at suicide.
Although Carter’s defense acknowledged her exchanges with Roy, her attorneys argued that prosecutors had“cherry-picked”only those text messages that served their case against her, ignoring others in which Carter urged Roy toward help for his struggles.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court echoed that theme when it rejected Carter’s appeal. She began serving her sentence in February.
In July, Carter’s legal team appealed her conviction and sentence to the U.S. Supreme Court, according toThe Washington Post. The appeal revisits their argument that Carter’s statements to Roy in thousands of texts and emails over two years — a handful of which propose suicide options, along with Carter’s encouragement for Roy kill himself, as he vowed to do — amount to free speech and not a criminal act.
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), text “home” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 or go tosuicidepreventionlifeline.org.
source: people.com
