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Dissecting the Michelle Carter, "Texting Suicide," Case

Dissecting the Michelle Carter, "Texting Suicide," Case

Released Saturday, 25th January 2020
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Dissecting the Michelle Carter, "Texting Suicide," Case

Dissecting the Michelle Carter, "Texting Suicide," Case

Dissecting the Michelle Carter, "Texting Suicide," Case

Dissecting the Michelle Carter, "Texting Suicide," Case

Saturday, 25th January 2020
Good episode? Give it some love!
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Michelle Carter, a young woman who encouraged her boyfriend to kill himself, was released from jail on Thursday, after just under a year behind bars.  Carter was just 17 years old when her boyfriend, Conrad Roy III, died by suicide after sitting in his truck, which was filled with carbon monoxide.  The evidence revealed that, in the weeks prior to that fateful day, Michelle Carter had sent Conrad text message after text message, urging him to kill himself.  However, despite what the media has widely reported, Michelle Carter was not convicted of involuntary manslaughter due to those text messages.  In fact, the Court determined that those text messages were not Michelle Carter's crime.  Instead, it was when Conrad Roy got out of his truck midway through his suicide attempt and was on the phone with Carter telling her that he did not want to go through with it where her crime was committed.  Instead of encouraging him to stay out of the truck, Carter confessed to a friend that she commanded him to get back in and finish things.  And, when she knew he was back in the truck and was dying, she did nothing to save him.  It was based on her commanding him to get back in the car and doing nothing to save him from the danger she created that the Court concluded Carter was responsible for Roy's death and why she was ultimately convicted of involuntary manslaughter.  Do you agree? Can someone's words alone over a telephone be the cause of another person's suicide?  Do words constitute "conduct" as required by the law in Massachusetts?  Does charging someone with involuntary manslaughter based on their words alone violate that person's right to free speech?  In the age of social media, should remotely coercing someone to commit suicide be illegal?  Attorney Rosensweig examines all of this and more in this episode. 

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