A Massachusetts woman who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in June for encouraging her boyfriend to kill himself was sentenced Thursday to 2 1/2-years in prison, according to Fox News. Liberals are attacking the sentencing of Michelle Carter, 20, in the suicide texting case, as an infringement of her First Amendment right to free speech. Should she be held liable for encouraging the death of her 18-year-old boyfriend?
Of course, liberals would abandon the rights of a young man who was confused and relied on the one person who could stop him from killing himself in 2014. She did not. Instead this callous and conniving murderer, who was17-years-old at the time, murdered her boyfriend Conrad Roy III, 18, by insisting that he kill himself with a series of texts and phone calls.
The young man who was confused and yearned to find a way out of his dilemma was urged to commit himself to a death sentence, which he carried out in his pickup truck as it filled with carbon monoxide in a store parking lot in Fairhaven, Mass.
Her words were not one of comfort or of attempting to stop his act to end his life. Her words were incredibly diabolical. In a text Carter wrote, “You can’t think about it. You just have to do it. You said you were gonna do it. Like I don’t get why you aren’t,” reported Fox News.
Roy did not have a prayer. The prosecutors felt the same and even urged that this woman, who claimed to have been the dead young man’s girlfriend, be given one of the strongest penalty sentences possible. She faced up to 20 years in prison, and even though prosecutors requested Carter be sentenced to at least seven years in state prison, she got a break at 2 1/2-years in prison; she will only have to serve 15 months of that.
There is something deeply wrong with the sentence for a number of reasons. Forget all of the liberals and the pundits who feel that she had a legal, constitutional right to engage in expressing her text and verbal death urgings. There is a limit to when speech becomes the weapon of death. One cannot shout fire in a theater and rely on constitutional protection.
The freedom to kill a person with words that trigger a person who has mental challenges should never be allowed or protected by any federal or state constitution. Carter knew that her words were meant to push her boyfriend to commit suicide. The number and frequency of her texts and verbal expressions urging him to kill himself is evidence of her guilt and should have garnered her a 20-year sentence with no exceptions.
The female killer’s lawyer asked for a more lenient sentence for his client who sat in the courtroom showing no emotion and no apology for her vicious conduct.
The dead young man’s heartbroken father Conrad Roy Jr. read his impact statement in court, “I am heartbroken. Our family is heartbroken,” Roy said. “Where is her humanity…in what world is this acceptable?” He added, Carter “exploited” his son’s weakness and used him as a “pawn,” according to Fox News.
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