Woman On Trial For Texts 'driving Boyfriend To Suicide'

HappilyLiberal

Well-Known Member
Oh yes ma'am I know about that. I was just saying, that's probably the excuse that they are using to give her some leniency when she deserves none. There were some black 17 year olds in my area that stole a car with a child in it, ended up killing the child. They are being charged as adults, there was no question. I have often wondered how things would've been if the killers had been white.

Those negrums deserve the death penalty. They shot that child in cold blood!
 

MissNina

Libra Girl
This case is still going on? I thought they had finally dropped everything.

Glad she's getting a bench trial. This is not a trial to trust to a jury. People would be too emotional.
The only reason she was even charged was because the prosecutor had ties to the young man's family. As horrible as it is that she said these things to him, ultimately he is the one who decided to kill himself. She shouldn't have been charged and shouldn't be convicted. Taking emotions out of it, he had been thinking about this for months. And she didn't force him. I just don't see where she has culpability in this.

Lol Girl...you can't go personally giving a man encouragement & details on how to kill a specific person, even if it's himself. This case is basically assisted suicide, IMO, which is illegal in most states anyway.
 

Mrs. Verde

Well-Known Member
A coworker of mine had a way to see all of her kids texts on her own phone. She was complaining because there were so many duck faces etc. This was when her daughter was 13. I don't know if she still does it.
She probably has some type of spy application loaded on the phone. There are a lot apps out there for parents to monitor their kids devices.
 

Leeda.the.Paladin

Well-Known Member
She's blaming what she did on antidepressants.

Woman in texting suicide case 'intoxicated' by antidepressants, doctor says
By Jay Croft and Natisha Lance, CNN



Updated 1:57 AM ET, Tue June 13, 2017






  • tles

Story highlights

  • Michelle Carter was delusional after switching to a new prescription drug, doctor testifies
  • Prosecutors have argued Carter nudged Roy toward suicide via numerous text messages

Taunton, Massachusetts (CNN)A woman on trial for urging her boyfriend to kill himself was delusional after becoming "involuntarily intoxicated" by antidepressants, a psychiatrist said Monday.

Michelle Carter "was unable to form intent" after switching to a new prescription drug only weeks before her boyfriend committed suicide in July 2014, Dr. Peter Breggin testified. She even texted his phone for weeks after he died, Breggin said.
Carter, 20, is on trial for involuntary manslaughter in the death of Conrad Roy III, who was 18 when he poisoned himself by inhaling carbon monoxide in his pickup truck.


Prosecutors have argued that while Carter played the role of a loving and distraught girlfriend, she had secretly nudged Roy toward suicide by sending him numerous text messages encouraging him to take his own life.
Prosecutors say the texts prove Carter badgered Roy to his death. But defense attorneys argue he already was intent on killing himself and that Carter had urged him to get help.
Legal experts are watching the trial closely because it could set a legal precedent on whether it is a crime to tell someone to commit suicide.


Defense attorney Joseph Cataldo talks to his client, Michelle Carter, in court.
A switch in drugs
Breggin, testifying for the defense, said that Carter had no nefarious intent but genuinely thought she was helping Roy. She had been on Prozac for years before switching to another antidepressant, Celexa, in April 2014 -- three months before Roy's death, Breggin said.
Such drugs can impair judgment, wisdom, understanding, love and empathy, he said -- especially in the adolescent brain, which is still developing and is "more susceptible to harm and all intrusions."
At the time of Roy's death, Carter was 17.
Breggin, who did not treat Carter, told Bristol County Juvenile Court Judge Lawrence Moniz that he reached his conclusions after reviewing Carter's educational records, text messages and police files and interviewed a half-dozen people who knew her.
Carter is being tried as a youth because she was a minor when her alleged crime took place. She waived her right to a jury trial, so the judge will render a verdict after testimony concludes.
Before age 12, Carter had seemed to be loving, caring and helpful. But as a teen she became "a very troubled youngster," Breggin said.
Carter began taking Prozac in 2011, when she was 14, after developing anorexia, Breggin said. She later transitioned to Celexa, which he said can increase suicide risk in people younger than 24 along with agitation, panic attacks, grandiosity and not understanding the trouble one is getting into.
Adverse changes also can occur when doses change, Breggin said.
Breggin testified that Carter began cutting herself between April and June of 2014.


Dr. Peter Breggin uses a whiteboard to illustrate a point Monday at Michelle Carter's trial.
'My life's a joke'
Roy's body was found July 13, 2014, a day after his suicide in his parked truck in a Kmart parking lot in Fairhaven, nearly 40 miles from his home.
As early as October 2012, Roy told Carter he was going to kill himself and that there was nothing she could do to stop him, Breggin said. The psychiatrist said Roy made four suicide attempts before succeeding.
Over the course of many texts to Carter about depression and hopelessness, Roy spoke often of killing himself and going to heaven, Breggin said.
Roy believed he had seen the devil at a hospital, and Carter said she had dreamed of the devil, said Breggin, who added that nightmares are common among people who are on Prozac.
"My life's an abortion," the young man told Carter in a text, Breggin said. "I just feel like my life's a joke. My negative thoughts have controlled me to the point where I'm legit going insane."
Roy suggested the pair should end up like Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare's suicidal young lovers, and believed they would still be able to communicate after death, Breggin said.
Breggin said his clinical analysis was that Carter would do anything to help Roy and was always cheering him up. Meanwhile, Roy provided little encouragement and was negative about dating and marrying her, Breggin said.
The texts that led up to teen's suicide: Read them here
'Enmeshed in a delusion'?
On Celexa, Breggin said, Carter became "involuntarily intoxicated" and began to think she could help Roy get what he wanted -- to die painlessly, to get to heaven and to help his family grieve less by understanding him.
"She is not forming the criminal intent -- 'I'm gonna harm him,'" Breggin said. "She's found a way to use her unique power to help and to help this boyfriend -- in her mind but not in his -- to not keep making mistakes and not keep hurting himself."
Assistant District Attorney Maryclare Flynn said last week that when Roy had second thoughts that fateful night, Carter told him to get back in the truck and listened on the phone while he cried out in pain and took his last breaths.
"She was enmeshed in a delusion," Breggin testified. "She was unable to form intent because she was so grandiose."
Breggin also reviewed a letter that Roy left for Carter. It said Roy was expecting to reach heaven, that he loved her, and that he thanked her for her kindness. In the letter he didn't say anything about being bullied.
A day after Roy's suicide Carter texted him, saying: "Did you do something??! Conrad I love you so much please tell me this is a joke. I'm so sorry I didn't think you were being serious Conrad please don't leave us like this," according to the text shown in court.
Two months later, Carter also texted Roy to say that she had raised $2,300 through a softball tournament to raise awareness of mental health issues.
"She imagines him looking down upon her," Breggin said.
Prosecutor: Carter was untruthful
During cross-examination, Assistant District Attorney Katie Rayburn tried to paint Carter as an untruthful person who craved attention.
Rayburn said Carter had routine medical checkups but doctors never noted on her medical records that she was cutting herself.
Rayburn said Breggin used text messages to conclude Carter was cutting herself.
The prosecutor said Carter was sending simultaneous messages of distress to a friend named Lisa and innocuous messages to boy she liked named Luke.
In the text message exchange, which Rayburn read out loud, Carter texted Lisa: "completely lost control tonight and I'm really disappointed in myself I thought I was getting better." Moments later, she texted Luke to say: "I'm bored as hell. You?"
In another message to Lisa, Carter wrote that she couldn't stop shaking because she "cut way too deep it won't stop bleeding."
The prosecutor said Carter's mother also never reported any concerns about the cutting.
Breggin said people who cut themselves are very secretive and learn how to conceal it.
Rayburn also tried to pin Breggin down on the exact period of involuntary intoxication. Breggin said it started between June 29 and July 2, 2014, but he wasn't clear when it ended.
On July 15, 2014, Rayburn said Carter met with a therapist, who did not indicate that Carter had any symptoms of involuntary intoxication.
Natisha Lance reported from Taunton, Massachusetts, and Jay Croft reported and wrote from Atlanta.
 

MzLady78

Well-Known Member
This case is still going on? I thought they had finally dropped everything.

Glad she's getting a bench trial. This is not a trial to trust to a jury. People would be too emotional.
The only reason she was even charged was because the prosecutor had ties to the young man's family. As horrible as it is that she said these things to him, ultimately he is the one who decided to kill himself. She shouldn't have been charged and shouldn't be convicted. Taking emotions out of it, he had been thinking about this for months. And she didn't force him. I just don't see where she has culpability in this.

I totally agree with you, and I think this verdict sets a bad precedent.

I really can't stand this culture of nobody being responsible for their own actions.
 

NijaG

Well-Known Member
^^^

She deserves some sort of punishment.

My understanding is the guy tried to stop the process at one point and she encouraged him to continue.

This guy was in a mentally fragile state of mind and instead of alerting someone to help or at worse ignore him, she was egging him on.

Bully and/or emotional abuser, I don't know. But she is something and took advantage of a mentally vulnerable person.
 

MizzKutieQ

Well-Known Member
This is no different from mental abuse. If someone mentally abused a woman and she got to the point where she killed herself due to the abuse, they would hold the abuser responsible, because had she not have gone through the abuse she most likely would've been alive. Just because she didn't kill him herself doesn't take away the fact that she was mentally manipulating him which is basically mental abuse.
 

FelaShrine

Well-Known Member
This case is still going on? I thought they had finally dropped everything.

Glad she's getting a bench trial. This is not a trial to trust to a jury. People would be too emotional.
The only reason she was even charged was because the prosecutor had ties to the young man's family. As horrible as it is that she said these things to him, ultimately he is the one who decided to kill himself. She shouldn't have been charged and shouldn't be convicted. Taking emotions out of it, he had been thinking about this for months. And she didn't force him. I just don't see where she has culpability in this.

You know when I first heard this story I was like so she literally said jump off the bridge and he did it anyway. whatever tis is stupid

then I read her texts and wooowwwwww..yea Im glad she got caught and was found guilty. She looks like a lunatic anyway and shouldn't be around normal people.
 

Farida

Well-Known Member
While I want her to be punished this is still kind of crazy to me. Involuntary manslaughter for speech?

I felt that way until I read her texts. She knew the guy was depressed, tortured by a mental illness. He trusted her and leaned on her. When he had second thoughts and fears about going through with his plan she TOLD him to get back in the car and finish the job. She talked him out of every single objection he had. Her jurisdiction defines the standard as "reckless and wanton." I believe the entirety of her texts meets the standard.

And after the facts she text her friend saying how she told him to "f*****king get back in the car.

The fact that she knew he was hopelessly depressed makes it worse IMO.

Maybe she was overwhelmed by him and wanted out but she could've told her parents, called 911, filed a restraining order.
 

kimpaur

Well-Known Member
I read somewhere that the judge said he would have thrown the case out except, there was literally a point where the gas was engulfing the vehicle and he texted her, saying he was afraid and getting out. She literally told him to get back in and finish the job.
She deserves what she got.
 

OhTall1

Well-Known Member
Sentencing was today

Woman who sent texts urging suicide gets 15 months in jail

Associated Press
By DENISE LAVOIE, AP Legal Affairs Writer 1 hr ago

Michelle Carter awaits her sentencing in a courtoom in Taunton, Mass., Thursday, Aug. 3, 2017, for involuntary manslaughter for encouraging Conrad Roy III to kill himself in July 2014. (Matt West/The Boston Herald via AP, Pool)


TAUNTON, Mass. (AP) - A woman who encouraged her suicidal boyfriend to kill himself in dozens of text messages and told him to "get back in" a truck filled with toxic gas was sentenced Thursday to 15 months in jail for involuntary manslaughter.

Michelle Carter, now 20, was convicted in June by a judge who said her final instruction to Conrad Roy III caused his death. Carter was 17 when the 18-year-old Roy was found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning in July 2014.

Juvenile Court Judge Lawrence Moniz gave Carter a 2½-year jail sentence but said she had to serve only 15 months of that. He also sentenced her to five years of probation. He granted a defense motion that would keep Carter out of jail until her appeals in Massachusetts courts are exhausted.

The judge called the case, which has garnered international attention, "a tragedy for two families."

Carter's lawyer, Joseph Cataldo, had asked the judge to spare his client any jail time and instead give her five years of probation and require her to receive mental health counseling. He said Carter was struggling with mental health issues of her own - bulimia, anorexia and depression - during the time she urged Roy to kill himself.

"Miss Carter will have to live with the consequences of this for the rest of her life," Cataldo said. "This was a horrible circumstance that she completely regrets."

Prosecutor Maryclare Flynn called probation "just not reasonable punishment" for her role in Roy's death. Prosecutors asked the judge to send Carter to state prison for seven to 12 years.


In dozens of text messages, Carter had urged Roy to follow through on his talk of taking his own life. "The time is right and you are ready ... just do it babe," Carter wrote in a text the day he killed himself.

The sensational trial was closely watched on social media, in part because of the insistent tone of Carter's text messages.

"You can't think about it. You just have to do it. You said you were gonna do it. Like I don't get why you aren't," Carter wrote in one text.

Cataldo argued that Roy was determined to kill himself and nothing Carter did could change that. He said Carter initially tried to talk Roy out of it and urged him to get professional help, but eventually went along with his plan. Cataldo also argued that Carter's words amounted to free speech protected by the First Amendment.

In convicting Carter, the judge focused his ruling on Carter telling Roy to "get back in" after he climbed out of his truck as it was filling with carbon monoxide and told her he was afraid.

The judge said those words constituted "wanton and reckless conduct" under the manslaughter statute.

Roy's family told the court Thursday that they were devastated by his death.

Conrad Roy Jr. said it inflicted the "worst emotional pain" he has ever experienced.

"I am heartbroken," the father said.

A 13-year-old sister, Camden Roy, testified that she's "haunted" by the realization that she'll never see her brother wed or be an aunt to his children.

Carter and Roy met in Florida in 2012 while both were on vacation with their families. After that, they only met in person a handful of times. Their relationship consisted mainly of texting.

Carter was tried as a youthful offender, so the judge had several options for sentencing. He could have committed her to a Department of Youth Services facility until she turns 21 on Aug. 11. He could also have combined a DYS commitment with an adult sentence, or could have given her an adult sentence of anything from probation to the maximum 20-year term.
 

OhTall1

Well-Known Member
Out already
Served a 15 month sentence and now she's out on probation for five years

Michelle Carter, convicted in texting suicide case, freed from jail
By Philip Marcelo



Woman convicted in texting suicide case to be released
Michelle Carter was convicted of manslaughter for urging her suicidal boyfriend, 18-year-old Conrad Roy III, to kill himself in 2014.

BOSTON - A woman convicted of manslaughter for urging her suicidal boyfriend to kill himself in text messages that included, "Just do it, babe," was released from jail Thursday.

Michelle Carter was released more than three months early from a county jail in Massachusetts, where she had been serving a 15-month sentence. The 23-year-old Plainville native accrued enough credits for good behavior and attending jail programs, according to officials. She now has to serve five years of probation.

Carter, wearing a white blazer and dark slacks, was spotted being driven out of the facility by her parents Thursday morning.

Her release comes after the U.S. Supreme Court declined last week to hear her lawyers' appeal of her involuntary manslaughter conviction in the 2014 death of her boyfriend, Conrad Roy III.

Carter's case garnered national attention as it raised thorny legal questions about free speech and provided a disturbing look at teenage relationships and depression. It also sparked legislative proposals in Massachusetts to criminalize suicide coercion.

A Massachusetts judge determined Carter, who was 17 at the time, caused the death of the 18-year-old Roy when she ordered him in a phone call to get back into his parked truck, which he'd rigged to fill up with deadly carbon monoxide.

The phone call wasn't recorded, but the judge relied on a text Carter sent her friend in which she said she told Roy to get back in. In text messages sent in the days leading up to Roy's death, Carter also encouraged him to follow through with his suicide plan and chastised him when he didn't.

Carter opted for a bench trial, an unusual legal strategy that meant a judge decided her fate rather than a jury. She also didn't testify in her defense at the trial.

The state's highest court upheld Carter's conviction last February and she was ordered to begin serving her jail sentence. She was denied parole in September.

“After she convinced him to get back into the carbon monoxide filled truck, she did absolutely nothing to help him: she did not call for help or tell him to get out of the truck as she listened to him choke and die,” Justice Scott Kafker wrote in the state Supreme Judicial Court's decision.

Carter and Roy both lived in Massachusetts but met in Florida in 2012 while both were on vacation with their families. Their relationship consisted mainly of texting and other electronic communications. Both teens struggled with depression, and Roy had made earlier suicide attempts.

Carter's lawyers argued in their Supreme Court appeal that the conviction should be thrown out because it was an “unprecedented” violation of their client's First Amendment rights that suggested “words alone” are enough to hold someone responsible for another person’s suicide.

RELATED: Woman who encouraged suicidal boyfriend to take his own life appeals to Supreme Court

The lawyers also argued there was simply not enough evidence to prove Carter urged Roy to get back in his truck to die, or that he would have lived if she had called for help or taken other actions to try and save his life.

A case strongly echoing Carter's, meanwhile, is playing out in a Boston court.

Prosecutors say former Boston College student Inyoung You drove her boyfriend Alexander Urtula to kill himself in a toxic relationship that included thousands of abusive text messages.

The 21-year-old has pleaded not guilty to involuntary manslaughter.
 
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