Guilty verdict in trial of woman who texted boy to commit suicide

Enlarge / Michelle Carter. (credit: Boston Globe/Getty Images)

A Massachusetts woman who is charged with involuntary manslaughter because of text messages prosecutors say cajoled a teen boy into committing suicide was found guilty Friday.

Judge Lawrence Moniz, who was presiding over the non-jury trial, began deliberating Tuesday after a weeklong trial in a Bristol County courtroom.

The woman, Michelle Carter, faces a maximum 20-year prison term in a widely watched prosecution in a state that has no law forbidding people from encouraging suicide. The authorities, however, maintained that when Carter was 18, she sent her teen friend Conrad Roy text messages that "wantonly and recklessly" caused him to poison himself in a car with carbon monoxide in 2014.

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