On Friday June 16, 2017 Michelle Carter was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. A sentencing report is being prepared and will be announced in a hearing on August 3, 2017. Carter will be sentenced as an adult and faces up to 20 years in the state prison.
A psychiatrist who agrees with the verdict said that this shows that it is unacceptable to play games with emotionally vulnerable people like Conrad. Michelle was found guilty due to the fact that she repeatedly nagged him into killing himself. On the day Conrad took his life, Carter began texting with him at approximately 4:00 AM and continuously sent pushy texts and calls until his death at approximately 8:00 PM that evening. After listening to him die, Carter made no attempts to contact anyone, his family or emergency services. Lastly, the judge pointed out, Carter didn’t bother to tell Conrad to get out of the truck even though she could hear the water pump noise in the background of the call.
After Conrad’s demise, Carter texted his family and attended his funeral. At the ceremony Michelle put on a dramatic show of grief. The following month, Michelle held a fundraiser for suicide prevention complete with a Facebook page. Approximately a hundred people attended including Roy’s family who were unaware of Michelle’s role in Conrad’s death.
Not only that, Michelle used the exact quotes from a star on TV show Glee. Carter took the words verbatim from interviews and performances by actress Lea Michele, who was mourning the unexpected death of her real life boyfriend Cory Monteith. In another added twist, Cater pushed Conrad to kill himself exactly one year to the day that Lea Michele’s boyfriend died on July 13, 2013. Conrad took his life on the evening of July 12, 2014 and was found the next day. His official date of death is July 13, 2014.
Judge Moniz made if very clear in his directives to Carter that she was in no way to contact any member of Conrad Roy III’s family or any of the witnesses who testified (many were her former high school friends.)
According to the Centers for Disease Control, one of the major risk factors in suicide is a family history of suicide. This might be the reasoning behind the court specifically banning Carter from contact with Conrad’s two younger sisters or his mother. Roy’s family was present in court throughout the trial and was visibly shaken by much of the evidence presented. The court showed the text messages Conrad exchanged with Carter along with pictures of where Conrad passed.
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