Speaker 1: It's a groundbreaking and disturbing case. A twenty year old
Speaker 1: is on trial in Massachusetts for manslaughter for texting her
Speaker 1: boyfriend pushing him to commit suicide when he was wavering
Speaker 1: and considering going to sleep instead. Prosecutors saying more than
Speaker 1: a thousand texts Michelle Carter not only pressured Conrad Roy
Speaker 1: to kill himself, but also instructed him on exactly how
Speaker 1: to poison himself with carbon monoxide, which he did in
Speaker 1: his pickup truck. In the summer of fourteen, the state's
Speaker 1: highest court rule that prosecutors could go forward with a
Speaker 1: trial on involuntary manslaughter charges. Carter's defense lawyers say that
Speaker 1: Roy had long battled depression and had attempted suicide, and
Speaker 1: that Carter herself had a history of emotional instability. Our
Speaker 1: guest is Rosanna Cavalaro, professor at Suffolk University Law School. Rosanna,
Speaker 1: when I first heard about the case, I thought it
Speaker 1: was odd and a stretch, But then I read these
Speaker 1: very dark texts where she's aggressive, pushing him to commit
Speaker 1: suicide and bullying him when he wavers um. What does
Speaker 1: the state have to prove? The state have to prove
Speaker 1: that she understood that her conduct could pose a risk
Speaker 1: of significant harm to him, and I think that part
Speaker 1: is relatively straightforward the context, as you said, the thing
Speaker 1: she was urging him to do was to end his life.
Speaker 1: Cannot be a greater risk than that. The other thing
Speaker 1: that they have to prove is that her words caused that,
Speaker 1: And I think that's really where the complexity is, because
Speaker 1: we like to understand that each individual controls their own
Speaker 1: decisions are free will is what makes us different from
Speaker 1: every other animal. Uh. And it's unusual to be able
Speaker 1: to say that one person causes another to do something
Speaker 1: as drastic as taking their life. But I think that
Speaker 1: the Commonwealth has made inroads on that. That is, they've
Speaker 1: demonstrated that the aid that she spoken at the circumstances
Speaker 1: of him being in and out of the car as
Speaker 1: you described, UH, suggests that a judge could find that
Speaker 1: her words made the difference, that her words really did
Speaker 1: override his own decision making. You mentioned a judge. How
Speaker 1: important is the decision the defense made to waive a
Speaker 1: jury trial and have a judge decide the case. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that the defense expects that if they try
Speaker 1: it to a judge, there's going to be a little
Speaker 1: bit less of the kind of raw sympathy that we
Speaker 1: would get with a cross section of jurors. That sympathy is,
Speaker 1: you know, nothing wrong with it. It's not inappropriate, but
Speaker 1: it's sometimes invites jurors to get to a result that
Speaker 1: they want without absolutely towing the line on the law.
Speaker 1: And I think trying to adjudge is a way of saying,
Speaker 1: we really want a very careful consideration of whether this
Speaker 1: could ever be a manslaughter. You know, let's assume that
Speaker 1: the state it proves everything. There's still a real question
Speaker 1: about whether one person can cause another to make a
Speaker 1: decision that's life ending. The defense argued to the state's
Speaker 1: highest court that this was protected speech and lost. Tell
Speaker 1: me what the highest court ruled. Well, I think the
Speaker 1: idea is that you know, there are limits even in
Speaker 1: the world of speech. You know, you can't yell fire
Speaker 1: in a crowded theater, is the famous quote. And I
Speaker 1: can say fire in a lot of different contexts, but
Speaker 1: if I say it in a way that poses an
Speaker 1: imminent threat and imminent risk, then I've lost that freedom
Speaker 1: to speak. It's not an absolutely unlimited right, because you know,
Speaker 1: words have effects on others, and in certain contexts, even words,
Speaker 1: and the right to use them can be limited. What's
Speaker 1: the defense case, Well, I think the defense, you know,
Speaker 1: is proceeding on several fronts, one of which is to
Speaker 1: suggest that she herself was impaired, and I think some
Speaker 1: of the most recent evidence was about what her circumstances are,
Speaker 1: whether the medicines that she was relying on were clouding
Speaker 1: her judgments. You know, one of those things that we
Speaker 1: require in any criminal cases that the person we want
Speaker 1: to punish is a person who was exercising their own will,
Speaker 1: their own uh men's ray. That is, they were thinking
Speaker 1: about and understood the nature of their own behavior and
Speaker 1: went ahead with it anyway. So if we have a
Speaker 1: person who's you know, this is not her, but in general,
Speaker 1: a person who's too drunk to make a decision or
Speaker 1: is um mentally ill so that they are not in
Speaker 1: a rational mind frame, then we're not going to punish them,
Speaker 1: or we're not going to punish them precisely the same way.
Speaker 1: So that's one area that I think that they were
Speaker 1: exploring with the evidence about her own medications and her
Speaker 1: own treatment history. And then I think they're also going
Speaker 1: to argue, as they did at the close of the
Speaker 1: Commonwealth evidence that even if you take everything the way
Speaker 1: the Commonwealth wants you to take it, we really should
Speaker 1: hesitate before saying that one person can, through a phone,
Speaker 1: through a text, take another person's life, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: a very rough way of saying what manslaughter is. It's
Speaker 1: an inexact way of saying it. What what the Commonwealth
Speaker 1: really saying is she created a risk to him that
Speaker 1: was so significant and so unreasonable that it deserves punishment.
Speaker 1: Will that forty minute phone call where Roy got out
Speaker 1: of the truck apparently feeling afraid, but in a phone
Speaker 1: call afterwards, Carter told her French she ordered him to
Speaker 1: get back in the truck, then listened for twenty minutes
Speaker 1: as he cried in pain and took his last breath
Speaker 1: and then died. Will that be important for the judge
Speaker 1: in determining causation. Absolutely absolutely, That's the center of it
Speaker 1: and what we're really looking at. And the Supreme Judicial
Speaker 1: Court mentioned this again in the abstract, not in connection
Speaker 1: with this exact evidence, although they had some access to it.
Speaker 1: Was the idea that one person can kind of override
Speaker 1: another person's will, that he could be so vulnerable and
Speaker 1: so diminished in terms of his ability to make his
Speaker 1: own judgments, that she could push him verbally, push him
Speaker 1: to do something that was the thing that ended his life.
Speaker 1: So the Supreme Judicial Court has recognized that possibility. And
Speaker 1: I think the evidence is very powerful that you know,
Speaker 1: if ever there were a case where those pieces came together, this,
Speaker 1: this could be it. You know, it's it's the technological
Speaker 1: or modern day equivalent of somebody down below watching a
Speaker 1: desperate person up on a roof and yelling, jump, you know,
Speaker 1: jump do it? Uh? And they did it electronically. She
Speaker 1: did it through a text. But what it amounts to
Speaker 1: is pushing him beyond a tipping point where he wasn't
Speaker 1: able to if the court sees it this way, he
Speaker 1: wasn't able to decide for himself in that moment, Rosanna.
Speaker 1: Had there been in about a minute, have there been
Speaker 1: other cases similar to this, though not exactly the same,
Speaker 1: You know they have? In fact, the STC cited a
Speaker 1: couple of them, and I just was looking at them quickly. Uh.
Speaker 1: One of them was a terrible case, again and involving
Speaker 1: a domestic situation, her husband and wife at odds, and
Speaker 1: she threatened to kill herself and he actually made the
Speaker 1: gun available to her. She was struggling with the gun.
Speaker 1: He showed her that if she handled it a certain way,
Speaker 1: she could succeed in pulling the trigger on herself. And
Speaker 1: after he showed her, she did it, and she ended
Speaker 1: her life with the gun. And the court found that
Speaker 1: his cajoling her like that he's making the gun available,
Speaker 1: putting it there on the floor for her to reach,
Speaker 1: and then showing her how she could move her arms
Speaker 1: the length in such a way that she could fire
Speaker 1: it on herself, was enough to make him the cause.
Speaker 1: Even though undoubtedly he was not touching the gun when
Speaker 1: it went off, he could still be viewed as the
Speaker 1: cause of her suicide. So I think we have the
Speaker 1: precedent there that cases about maybe twenty five or thirty
Speaker 1: years old, but nothing in the interim has said that
Speaker 1: it's not good law. Thank you so much. It's it's
Speaker 1: a tragic case, but certainly incredibly interesting as a legal matter.
Speaker 1: That's Rosanna Cavallero, Professor at Suffolk University Law School,