"You can't think about it," 17-year-old Michelle Carter allegedly texted her boyfriend the day he killed himself. "You just have to do it. You said you were gonna do it. Like I don't get why you aren't." After Carter's defense team asked a judge to dismiss the case against her last month, prosecutors have now released a record of texts between Carter and 18-year-old Conrad Roy III in an effort to bolster their charge of manslaughter against Carter, the AP reports. Roy, who had a history of depression and at least one prior suicide attempt, killed himself via carbon monoxide poisoning in the parking lot of a Massachusetts Kmart in 2014. "You can't keep living this way," another alleged text from Carter, who once called Roy the love of her life, reads. "You just need to do it like you did the last time and not think about it and just do it, babe."
Carter's defense claims her texts are free speech protected by the First Amendment and that she tried to talk Roy out of suicide for weeks, only relenting when she realized he was going to do it no matter what, the AP reports. According to Mass Live, prosecutors say Carter spoke to Roy on the phone while he was in the Kmart parking lot and told him to get back in his truck when he got scared, as evidenced by this text allegedly sent from Carter to a friend after Roy's death: "His death is my fault like honestly I could have stopped him I was on the phone with him and he got out of the car because it was working and he got scared and I [expletive] told him to get back in." The AP notes that some legal experts question the manslaughter charge against Carter as Massachusetts has no law against assisted suicide. (More suicide stories.)