Michelle Carter freed after texting suicide conviction. Will her case change the law?

Michelle Carter, the 23-year-old Massachusetts woman who was convicted for encouraging her boyfriend to kill himself in a texting suicide case, was released from jail Thursday.

She served 11 months of her 15-month sentence and was released early from the Bristol County jail for good behavior, according to NBC.

Carter had been in jail since her 2017 involuntary manslaughter conviction in the death of Conrad Roy III, who died by suicide in 2014.

Prosecutors said during the high-profile case that Carter texted Roy to “get back in” the truck when he told her he was having second thoughts about killing himself, NBC reported.

Carter heard Roy’s last breaths on a phone call and didn’t tell anyone that he had died, prosecutors said, according to CNN.

Carter’s attorneys argued in an appeal to the Massachusetts Supreme Court that the conviction violated her free speech rights, CNN reported.

Massachusetts lawmakers are considering a bill called Conrad’s Law that would make suicide coercion a crime in the state, USA Today reported. Massachusetts is one of 10 states that doesn’t punish people who “induce others to kill themselves.”

Supported by Roy’s mother Lynn Roy, Conrad’s Law would incarcerate people for up to five years if they “know of another person’s propensity for suicidal ideation” and “intentionally coerces or encourages that person to commit or attempt to commit suicide.”

The bill was discussed in November 2019, according to WBUR.

“This is the only way I can honor him,” Lynn told WBUR.