Michelle Carter has been sentenced to two and a half years in jail in the death of 18-year-old Mattapoisett native Conrad Roy, following her manslaughter conviction for pressuring him into suicide in July of 2014.
Michelle Carter has been sentenced to two and a half years in jail in the death of 18-year-old Mattapoisett native Conrad Roy, following her manslaughter conviction for pressuring him into suicide in July of 2014.
Carter, who was 17 years old when she sent Roy a barrage of texts and Facebook messages encouraging him to kill himself before his eventual suicide, was convicted of a count of involuntary manslaughter in Taunton Juvenile Court on June 16.
Speaking in front of a full courtroom, packed with members of the Roy and Carter families, the prosecution argued for a sentence of 7 to 12 years in prison — while Joseph Cataldo, Carter’s defense attorney, asked Bristol Juvenile Court Judge Lawrence Moniz to give her five years of probation.
“The fact that [Carter is] still at that young age offers a greater promise of rehabilitation, ” Moniz said prior to issuing the sentence Thursday.
“Michelle Carter – her actions – killed Conrad Roy. She ended his life to better her own, ” Assistant District Attorney Maryclare Flynn said. “She has been convicted of a very serious crime that merits serious punishment.”
Carter continued to lie about Roy’s death for months afterwards in a bid to gain sympathy from her peers, Flynn argued. She cited a text message in which Carter told Roy she felt “played” by his delays in killing himself, saying that Carter misled Roy’s family, her friends and police officers.
“After his death, she became the player, ” Flynn said.
Cataldo said that Carter, in a letter to probation, had accepted responsibility for her actions and should receive term of probation with mandatory mental health treatment.
“This was a horrible circumstance that she complete regrets and does in her letter take responsibility for, your honor, ” Cataldo said.
Carter had graduated from high school and been accepted to college as the criminal case against her proceeded, though she did not attend due to the publicity surrounding the case, Cataldo said. The juvenile justice system is focused on rehabilitation, which would be best served by probation rather than prison, he argued.
“Ms Carter will have to live with the consequences of this for the rest of her life, ” said Cataldo, adding that Carter was no danger to the public.
Moniz, who also issued the verdict in the case after Carter waived her right to a jury trial, ruled in June that phone calls Carter made to Roy in the minutes before his death directly caused his suicide and justified the manslaughter charge, which carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.
In those phone calls, Carter told Roy to “f—— get back in” his truck as it filled with carbon monoxide after he expressed fears of following through on his suicide plan, according to text messages she sent to friends after his death.
“She instructed him to get back in the truck which she has reason to know is becoming a toxic environment to human life, ” Moniz said in a statement before he issued his verdict last month.
Roy’s sister, Camden Roy spoke in court Thursday, fighting back tears.
“Not having that one person I’ve been with every day since birth is a pain I will keep with me for the rest of my life, ” Camden Roy said. “He gave me an amazing 13 years being my best friend and the best role model any little sister could ask for. Not a day goes by without him being my first thought waking up and my last thought going to bed.”
During the trial, which took place over six days in June, prosecutors portrayed Carter as a deliberate manipulator, who systematically pressured Roy into suicide to gain sympathy from per peers and win the benefits of being a “grieving girlfriend.” They displayed text messages on a projector in the courtroom in which Carter repeatedly pressures him to kill himself during the last two weeks of his life, berating him when he fails to follow through.
During the trial, Assistant District Attorneys Flynn and Katie Rayburn pointed to Carter’s actions after Roy’s death, including describing herself as a mental health advocate to friends and sparring with Roy’s best friend over credit for a memorial baseball tournament in Roy’s honor, as evidence that she was seeking to socially profit from his death.
“You can encourage someone to die via text, and you can commit a crime via text, ” Rayburn said in her closing statement to Moniz.
The defense painted a different picture, pointing to Roy’s previous history of suicide attempts and continued research into suicide methods to argue that he had dragged Carter along on a suicide plan of his own making. Defense Attorney Joseph Cataldo also argued that Carter could not have caused his death by words alone, emphasizing that she was not physically present when Roy ended his life.
Cataldo highlighted text messages from the month before Roy killed himself, in which Carter repeatedly asked him to get help, to make the case that Carter was worn down into going along with Roy’s suicide plan by his longstanding desire to die
“What we’re dealing with is a suicide and not a homicide, ” Cataldo said during closing arguments.
Carter and Roy met in 2012 while visiting relatives in Naples, Florida. They struck up an off-and-on relationship that was conducted almost entirely via texts and Facebook messages, included frank discussions of depression, eating disorders and both teens’ emotional frailty. They confided in each other about his 2012 suicide attempt and her struggles with an eating disorder.
Roy spent the day of his death on Horseneck Beach with his mother and sister. In testimony, Roy’s mother Lynn Roy said she was unaware that Roy was thinking about suicide, and believed his recent high school graduation, acceptance to Fitchburg State University and earning of his captain’s license pointed to a bright future.
After the family returned from the beach, Roy got in his truck, drove to parking lot of the now-closed Kmart in Fairhaven and started the gas-powered water pump that would fill the cabin of his vehicle with carbon monoxide and end his life.
