Criminal - Involuntary manslaughter - Suicide.

Byline: Mass. Lawyers Weekly Staff

Where a judge found that a defendant committed involuntary manslaughter as a youthful offender, (1) the evidence at trial was sufficient to support the judge's finding of proof beyond a reasonable doubt and (2) the other legal issues presented by the defendant, including her First Amendment claim, lack merit.

Affirmed.

"At age seventeen, Michelle Carter was charged with involuntary manslaughter as a youthful offender for the suicide death of Conrad Roy, age eighteen. In Commonwealth v. Carter, 474 Mass. 624 (2016) (Carter I), we affirmed the Juvenile Court judge's denial of the motion to dismiss the youthful offender indictment, 'conclud[ing] that there was probable cause to show that the coercive quality of the defendant's verbal conduct overwhelmed whatever willpower the eighteen year old victim had to cope with his depression, and that but for the defendant's admonishments, pressure, and instructions, the victim would not have gotten back into [his] truck and poisoned himself to death.' Thereafter, the defendant waived her right to a jury trial, and the case was tried to a judge in the Juvenile Court over several days. The defendant was convicted as charged and has appealed.

" In sum, the judge was entitled to credit the defendant's statement, and the corroborating details, that the victim had in fact gotten out of the truck and that the defendant ordered him back into the truck, ultimately causing his death.

" Once the victim left the truck, the judge found that the defendant overpowered the victim's will and thus caused his death.

"Although we recognize that legal causation in the context of suicide is an incredibly complex inquiry, we conclude that there was sufficient evidence to support a finding of proof of such causation beyond a reasonable doubt in the instant case. The judge could have properly found, based on this evidence, that the vulnerable, confused, mentally ill, eighteen year old victim had managed to save himself once again in the midst of his latest suicide attempt, removing himself from the truck as it filled with carbon monoxide. But then in this weakened state he was badgered back into the...