[ad_1]
Massachusetts women's lawyers convicted of manslaughter for encouraging her suicidal boyfriend to commit suicide on Monday urged the US Supreme Court to quash her conviction for violating her right to freedom of speech.
Michelle Carter's lawyers described her conviction in Conrad Roy III's death as "unprecedented," pointing out that this raises crucial questions about whether "single words" are enough to hold someone responsible for suicide. .
CASE REPORT: Michelle Carter, center, listens to her manslaughter conviction for inciting 18-year-old Conrad Roy III to kill herself in July 2014.
(Boston Herald via AP)
"Michelle Carter has not caused the tragic death of Conrad Roy and should not be held criminally responsible for his suicide," said Daniel Marx, one of his lawyers.
Carter was jailed in February after the Massachusetts Supreme Court unanimously upheld his death sentence on Roy, who was 18 years old. Carter, now 22, is serving a 15-month sentence.
The court agreed with a judge who had concluded that Carter had caused Roy's death in July 2014 when she had asked him by phone to climb back into his truck loaded with carbon monoxide and that he was not going to be killed. had called neither Roy's family nor the police.
The phone call was not recorded, but the judge focused on an SMS sent two months later by Carter to a friend in which she said that Roy was out of the truck because he was scared and that she had told him to come back.
TEXAS MAN FATALLY SHOOTS HIS SISTER BEFORE PASSING GUN ON HIMSELF IN SUICIDE MURDER SUPRESS
Carter's lawyers stated in their application to the Supreme Court that the Massachusetts judges had recognized that anyone who verbally encouraged someone to commit suicide should not be prosecuted, but did not provide "any indication to distinguish between favorable cases of assisted suicide in cases of unlawful killings ".
Associated Press contributed to this report.
[ad_2]
Source link