Michelle Carter Appeal Won't Be Heard By Supreme Court

The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday it will not hear an appeal in the Michelle Carter case, meaning the young Massachusetts woman's involuntary manslaughter conviction for encouraging her boyfriend via text messaging to kill himself will remain intact.

The case has been a landmark battle concerning free speech and what constitutes culpability for another's actions.

Carter has been in prison since February, some five years after her boyfriend, Conrad Roy III, killed himself.

Carter, who was 17 at the time, told Roy, who was 18, to get back into his truck as it filled with carbon monoxide in the parking lot of a Fairhaven Kmart in 2014. Carter had also sent text messages in the days leading up to his suicide encouraging him to go through with it.

Carter's lawyers argued that her messages were protected under the First Amendment.

"The US Supreme Court not accepting Michelle Carter's petition at this time is unfortunate," Joseph Cataldo, Carter's attorney, said in a short statement. "Clearly many legal scholars and many in the legal community understand the dangers created by the unprecedented decisions of the Massachusetts courts. To that end we will be weighing our next steps in correcting this injustice."

She was denied parole in September for what the Massachusetts Parole Board said was in part a "lack of empathy."

The Supreme Court's decision could reverberate in similar cases, including a high-profile one in Boston. In November, a former Boston College student pleaded not guilty to involuntary manslaughter for what prosecutors said was subjecting her boyfriend to unrelenting abuse, including in thousands of texts, before he killed himself.