Photo: Charles Krupa/AP
The lawyer forMichelle Carteris disappointed she wasn’t released early from jail after encouraging her boyfriend to kill himself in a series of texts and phone calls.
Carter wassentenced to 15 months in jailafter being foundguilty of involuntary manslaughterin the 2014 suicide of her boyfriend, 18-year-old Conrad Roy III. She asked the Massachusetts parole board to let her out seven months into her sentence, buton Friday her request was denied.
“I was certainly hopeful, given that she was 16 when she knew him then 17 [when he died], and given her age and mental health issues she was struggling with at the time,” her attorney, Joseph Cataldo, tells PEOPLE.
Cataldo adds, “She has conducted herself within the confines of her release, so I believe she was an excellent candidate for parole. By no means is she a danger to society.”
The decision added, “Ms. Carter needs to further address her causative factors that led to the governing offense.”
After she was convicted, she appealed, with her lawyers writing that her “words encouraging Roy’s suicide, however distasteful to this Court, were protected speech.”
He adds, “It’s never in society’s best interest to incarcerate anyone for their words when there was not a law in place criminalizing such speech.”
Michelle Carter.AP/REX/Shutterstock
Roy 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.
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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.
Roy Family
In finding Carter guilty, Bristol County Juvenile Court Judge Lawrence Moniz highlighted two revelations from Carter’s trial. In addition to her statement that she told Roy to “get back in” as he expressed a desire to abort his fatal plan, Carter initially failed to tell anyone else about it, the judge noted.
Police said Carter deliberately misled friends in the days and hours before Roy died, claiming to them that he’d gone missing at the same time the two of them were in contact.
“She did nothing,” said Moniz atCarter’s sentencing. “She did not call the police or Mr. Roy’s family. Finally, she did not issue a simple additional instruction: ‘Get out of the truck.’”
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
