Woman who urged boyfriend to kill himself released from jail early

Michelle Carter, the 23-year-old convicted of manslaughter for encouraging her boyfriend to commit suicide, was released from jail in Massachusetts on Thursday. She served a 15-month sentence, but was released more than three months early. 

Michelle Carter leaves the Bristol County jail, Thursday, Jan. 23, 2020, in Dartmouth, Mass. Steven Senne / AP

In the days before Carter’s boyfriend Conrad Roy III took his life, she sent numerous texts to Roy urging him to go through with his plan. While the content of her phone calls is not known, texts Carter sent such as “Just do it, babe,” and one in which she told Roy to get back inside a car rigged to fill monoxide gas, were key to her conviction. 

“After she convinced him to get back into the carbon monoxide filled truck, she did absolutely nothing to help him: she did not call for help or tell him to get out of the truck as she listened to him choke and die,” Justice Scott Kafker wrote in the state Supreme Judicial Court’s decision, The Associated Press reports.

Carter was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in June 2017.

Carter’s coercive texts drew national attention to the case, and provided shocking insight into toxic teenage relationships and depression. Both Carter and Roy struggled with depression. 

Last February, Massachusetts’ highest court upheld Carter’s conviction, and she was denied parole in September. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court declined to hear Carter’s lawyers’ appeal of her involuntary manslaughter conviction.

She will now serve five years of probation.