NEW BEDFORD — The defense lawyer for Michelle Carter, accused of encouraging a Mattapoisett teen to commit suicide, said she initially tried to get him help and suggested he join her at McLean Hospital, but then became "brainwashed" into assisting him with plans to take his own life.
Carter, the 18-year-old Plainville teen charged with involuntary manslaughter, told Conrad Roy III, 18, to come and join her at McLean Hospital, a psychiatric facility in Belmont, where she was, according to Joseph P. Cataldo. He refused, Cataldo said.
"He ultimately persuaded a young, impressionable girl," the attorney told reporters in an interview."Eventually he gets her to endorse his plan."
Eleven days before Roy committed suicide on July 13, 2014, he sent Carter a text, saying they should commit suicide together "like Romeo and Juliet," the lawyer said. "(Expletive), no we are not dying," Carter replied, according to Cataldo.
Roy died of carbon monoxide poisoning from a gas-powered water pump that was running inside the closed cab of his pickup truck, parked at the Fairhaven Kmart.
Cataldo made his comments in support of a motion to dismiss the grand jury's indictment of Carter. Judge Bettina Borders took the motion under advisement and scheduled the case for Oct. 2 in New Bedford Juvenile Court.
Cataldo did not elaborate on the purpose of Carter being at McLean, but co-counsel Cory Madera said the defense could raise it as an issue later in the case, if the defense loses the motion to dismiss.
In rebuttal, prosecutor Katie Rayburn said Carter knew what she was doing was wrong, and asked Roy to delete her texts to him. She said later that Roy's family would be mad at her and she would go to jail, if those texts were found.
Rayburn said in texts from July 6 to July 12, 2014, Carter berated Roy when he was having second thoughts and did not want to commit suicide, telling him on the night he finally took his own life to "get back in the car."
In one text, Roy asked Carter: "How was your day?" and Carter answered, "When are you going to do it?" according to Rayburn.
The Plainville teen knew Roy was "suicidal" and "especially vulnerable," told him she loved him and urged him to commit suicide, according to Rayburn.
In his arguments Monday, Cataldo said the prosecution was "trying to apply manslaughter to speech." ... Her actual conduct in this case was words... Words over text messages, and a phone call."
"It was his (Roy's) plan. He is someone who caused his own death," Cataldo said. Michelle Carter's only role in this is words."
He said the two teens only saw each other "once or twice in two years," but exchanged "thousands and thousands of text messages."
Cataldo called it a "sad and tragic case," but added that Roy was determined to take his own life, explaining the young man tried unsuccessfully two years earlier, had been in a psychiatric hospital and was taking different medications related to his mental state. He said Roy left behind "suicide notes" for his family when he left his home for what would be the last time.
Rayburn said through the use of technology, Carter participated in Roy's suicide, sending him text messages right before he took his life and by being on the phone with Roy when he died.
She called the words in Carter's texts "hurtful, offensive and likely to cause a violent act," adding that charges such as criminal harassment, stalking and threats are also based only on words. "One can be an aider and abetter simply because of words," she said.
"He (Roy) dies when she's (Carter) on the phone with him," Rayburn said. "It's as though she's there. She hears the voice and hears the water pump. She wants to be on the phone with him to make sure he doesn't back out."
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