Many people will already be aware of this story. Michelle Carter, 18, is on trial in America for allegedly encouraging her boyfriend to commit suicide.
Conrad Roy was also 18, and he had mental health problems. I won’t copy the text here, but you can read the text message exchanges between him and Carter in The Sun’s version of the story.
The message carried by these texts is crystal clear, and it only leaves you wondering how someone could be so evil, and at the same time so dumb as to document that evil so clearly.
But this is America we’re talking about, and the situation isn’t anywhere near as clear cut as you might think.
Carter is charged with involuntary manslaughter, which carries a 20 year jail term. However, Massachusetts (where all this happened) is one of a handful of American states where assisted suicide is not illegal, and that is where her lawyers are hovering. They argue that Conrad wanted to kill himself and she merely “assisted”. You only have to read those texts she sent to see just how much “assistance” she gave him.
Carter may have sent a few texts too many, though. Several months after the Conrad’s death, she sent a message to a friend which said:
Like, honestly I could have stopped it. I was the one on the phone with him and he got out of the car because [the carbon monoxide] was working and he got scared. I f***ing told him to get back in.
She also texted to a friend:
[If the police] read my messages with him I’m done. His family will hate me and I can go to jail.
When you read the full transcript of texts between her and Conrad, you can really come to only one conclusion – and that would hold, whatever the technical outcome of the trial.