Are texts urging suicide a chargeable crime? Top Massachusetts court must decide
Most states have laws against encouraging or assisting suicide.
But Massachusetts is not one of them, so justices on the state’s top court struggled to determine during a Thursday hearing whether texts and phone calls made by Michelle Carter are sufficient grounds for the state to pursue a manslaughter case against the young woman, the Associated Press reports.
Carter, who was 17 at the time, is accused in the New Bedford case of committing a crime through communications encouraging the 2014 suicide of 18-year-old Conrad Roy III, who died of carbon monoxide poisoning in his pickup truck.
“When did this cross the line—when did these words cross the line?” Justice Robert Cordy asked assistant Bristol County district attorney Shoshana Stern at one point.
During a phone conversation, she told Roy to get back in his truck after he got out, Stern replied. “[S]he was way over the line when she told him to get back in the truck.”
However, lawyers for Carter argue that she was not the proximate cause of his death and had a First Amendment right to say what she did, the AP reports.
“It’s not a case that should have even been brought,” said attorney Joseph Cataldo.
A juvenile court judge ruled last year that there was sufficient evidence to support an indictment, and the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts is now hearing an appeal of that ruling.
Related coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “Teen faces manslaughter charges in boyfriend’s suicide over texts she sent him”
