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Friday, March 29, 2024

U.S. Supreme Court rejects appeal in teen texting suicide case

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U.S. Supreme Court rejects appeal in teen texting suicide case
U.S. Supreme Court rejects appeal in teen texting suicide case

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday left in place the manslaughter conviction of a Massachusetts woman for goading her boyfriend into committing suicide.

Freddie Joyner has more.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday left in place the manslaughter conviction of Michelle Carter - a Massachusetts woman who was found guilty of goading her boyfriend into committing suicide in 2014 with numerous text messages and phone calls.

Evidence presented in the 2017 trial showed that Carter repeatedly urged her boyfriend, Conrad Roy, to kill himself by inhaling carbon monoxide inside a parked vehicle.

In one text, Carter told Roy - quote: "You just need to do it Conrad.

The more you push it off, the more it will eat at you." In another, she said: "You just gotta do it babe, you can't think about it." She was 17 and he was 18 at the time.

A Bristol County Juvenile Court judge in Massachusetts found her guilty of involuntary manslaughter in 2017 and ordered her to serve 15 months of a 2 1/2-year sentence in prison.

It was the first time Massachusetts brought manslaughter charges related to texting.

The case grabbed national headlines.

Carter's lawyers argued that her conviction violated her right to free speech under the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.

But the justices Monday refused to hear Carter's appeal of a Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling last year upholding her 2018 conviction.

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