'You Just Have to Do It'
Carter and Roy met in 2012 while vacationing in Florida and struck up a friendship that spiraled into a fatal bond. The two lived about 50 miles apart in Massachusetts and communicated mainly by phone and texts.
Both experienced mental health problems, according to court documents, and Roy struggled with depression. He had tried to die by suicide several times in different ways, including overdosing on acetaminophen, suffocating and drowning.
Initially, Carter tried to dissuade Roy from taking his own life and implored him to seek help at a mental health hospital where she was treated for an eating disorder.
When Roy spoke of suicide in October 2012, Carter told him not to move forward with it. "You have so much to live for," she texted.
But the despair Roy felt persisted, and Carter's tone shifted. The two conferred frequently about suicide logistics in summer 2014 and what type of portable machine could effectively produce carbon monoxide.
Roy expressed doubts about going through with the act, stating, "I have a bad feeling [that] this is going to create a lot of depression between my parents/sisters."
But Carter had a counter-argument.
"There's a point that comes where there isn't anything anyone can do to save you, not even yourself, and you've hit that point," she texted.
Carter also exhorted Roy, saying "YOU KEEP PUSHING IT OFF! You just said you were gonna do it tonight and now you're saying eventually."
Around dinnertime on July 12, 2014, Roy drove his pickup truck to a deserted parking lot and turned on a gas-powered water pump, causing carbon monoxide to seep into the cab.
He and Carter exchanged two long phone calls that night.
According to a text Carter sent to a friend in September 2014, "I was on the phone with him and he got out of the car because [the carbon monoxide] was working and he got scared and I f------ told him to get back in ... because I knew he would do it all over again the next day and I couldn't have him live the way he was living anymore."
Manslaughter or Cyberbullying?
After a trial in Bristol County Juvenile Court, Judge Lawrence Moniz issued his ruling on June 16, 2017.
Carter's attorney Joseph Cataldo had argued Roy was determined to take his own life and his death was a suicide, not a homicide.
But Moniz found Carter guilty of involuntary manslaughter and focused on her command to "get back in the truck."
Carter's "virtual presence," overwhelmed Roy's willpower, and "but for the defendant's admonishments, pressure and instructions, the victim would not have gotten back into the truck and poisoned himself to death," Moniz ruled.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Massachusetts protested, saying the decision violated free speech protections and could have a chilling effect on end-of-life discussions.
Northeastern University criminal law professor Daniel S. Medwed tells A&E Crime + Investigation that the verdict was flawed, but not for First Amendment reasons.
Medwed, a founding member of the board of the Innocence Network that works to overturn wrongful convictions, recalls his first reaction was that prosecutors were "over-reaching." "This is not manslaughter, it's basically cyberbullying," Medwed, a former defense attorney, says. "The causation piece was a problem because [Roy] had attempted suicide and backed out before. So for [Carter] to know it was foreseeable and that he would follow through was a little bit of a stretch."
Arguing that the manslaughter charge n Carter's case wasn't specific enough, Medwed and colleagues spearheaded a law codifying coerced suicide as a crime with support from Roy's mother, Lynn.
Conrad's Law makes coerced suicide—by someone who knows a person's suicidal tendencies and encourages them to take their own life—a felony punishable by up to five years in prison.
The law was introduced into the Massachusetts legislature in 2019 and is still pending.
Worst Case Scenarios
Concerns about the role of digital communication, such as Carter's texts, when it comes to crime are amplified with COVID-19, experts say.
Former federal prosecutor and law professor Laurie Levenson tells A&E Crime + Investigation the pandemic-related surge in virtual interaction "really opens the door to more criminal responsibility than we've seen in the past."
"What's really troubling, is when you get into words, not only do you have the issue of what the intent is in saying the words, but what do you anticipate the impact is going to be?" Levenson, a professor at Loyola Marymount University Law Schoo, says. "I really worry about the things immature people say to each other, because they're not thinking down the road towards the consequences of their words."
For trial lawyer Starkey, the worst type of fallout would be "we have someone who is a schoolyard bully or makes a stupid, in poor taste joke that causes an unstable person to commit suicide and—suddenly—they're up on manslaughter charges."
In Roy's death, Starkey believes the dots were uniquely connected because of repeated attempts to take his life, the teens' relationship and lengthy texts in which Carter aids with suicide plans and resists delays.
"The concern is there is going to be a case where we do not have all these pieces of evidence that connect the dots of causation from verbal speech or conduct to the final suicide," Starkey says. "And, that's where you worry that freedom of speech is going to be eroded."
'I Think He Was in Pain'
Another deciding factor in Moniz's verdict was Carter's failure to act as Roy was dying. "She did not call the police or Mr. Roy's family" to intervene, he said.
But Levenson notes that, legally, "we don't have a broad responsibility to save people in the U.S." because "there's no Good Samaritan law."
For psychologist Michael G. Wetter, an author and expert on adolescent psychology, the case flags expanding concerns about digital technology and communication—ranging from youths eating detergent pods in reaction to social media posts to encouraging suicide.
Carter "didn't have to look at [Roy's] face while he suffocated," Wetter tells A&E Crime + Investigation. "I think it could have made a huge difference. It's one thing to conceptualize something, it's another thing to view it."
Regarding Roy, "I think he was scared." Wetter says. "I think he was in pain. In a moment where he was very ambivalent, her communication to him reflected no ambivalence. Her comments were not, 'I don't know what you should do. Maybe you should go home. Maybe there's other things we can do.' There wasn't that. There was—'get back in the car.'"
He adds, "Suicide is a very permanent action for a state of mind that is temporary even if the pain that you're feeling has been going on for weeks and months—that's still temporary relative to eternity. There are always other options."
Help is available at the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Call 1-800-273-8255.
