A top court in the United States has upheld the manslaughter conviction of a woman accused of goading her teenage boyfriend into committing suicide with text messages and phone calls.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on Wednesday agreed with a lower court's 2017 ruling on Michelle Carter, who prosecutors said urged her 18-year-old boyfriend, Conrad Roy, to kill himself in a car park in Fairhaven, about 100km south of Boston, July 12, 2014.
The case, the first in the state to consider manslaughter charges tied to texting, has drawn national attention to cyber-bullying.
It has also raised concerns among civil liberties advocates who said Carter was being prosecuted for her speech.
But Justice Scott Kafker said the evidence supported a finding that Carter, then 17, "badgered" Roy by phone to get back into a truck he had stepped out of, after "constantly pressuring" him in text messages to commit suicide.
"The evidence against the defendant proved that, by her wanton or reckless conduct, she caused the victim's death by suicide," Kafker wrote for the unanimous seven-member court.
He rejected arguments by Carter, now 22, that her conviction violated her free speech rights under the US Constitution, saying the court was not punishing her for her words alone, but for "reckless or wanton words causing death."
Daniel Marx, Carter's lawyer, in a statement called the decision disappointing and said he was considering an appeal to the US Supreme Court.
Prosecutors at trial presented evidence showing that Roy briefly left the vehicle but returned after Carter, who spoke with him by phone, urged him to "get back in."
That instruction was captured in a text message Carter sent to a friend. She had, in earlier text messages, encouraged Roy to "promise" to kill himself and helped him plan the event after he abandoned earlier suicide attempts.
Carter, of Plainville, Massachusetts, was indicted in 2015. She opted against a jury trial, leaving her fate in the hands of Bristol County Juvenile Court Judge Lawrence Moniz, who found her guilty of involuntary manslaughter in June 2017.
Moniz subsequently ordered her to serve 15 months of a two-and-a-half sentence in prison. Her sentence was on hold while she appealed.
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