The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied Michelle Carter's appeal in the texting suicide case. Carter was convicted in 2017 of involuntary manslaughter for pressuring her boyfriend to commit suicide via text message. WGBH Morning Edition host Joe Mathieu spoke with Northeastern University law professor and WGBH legal analyst Daniel Medwed about what the Supreme Court's rejection means. The transcript below has been edited for clarity.
Joe Mathieu: Does the court's decision to not hear this case suggest the court thinks it was properly decided [and] that Carter is guilty of manslaughter?
Daniel Medwed: The court's decision does not necessarily reflect any judgment about the merits of the case — whether Carter deserved to be convicted or not. Rather, the Supreme Court usually only takes cases that are either of pressing national significance or where there's a split amongst the lower courts, and I suspect the court determined here that the Michelle Carter case doesn't fall into one of those buckets.
So the short answer is, I don't think we should infer much about guilt or innocence or the integrity of this conviction from the Supreme Court's decision to deny the request for a writ of certiorari.
Mathieu: The Carter case, though, had a lot of national significance, right? It was all over the news, all over the country.
Medwed: National significance is not necessarily synonymous with notoriety. The Michelle Carter prosecution got a lot of attention nationwide, and for good reason. The idea of charging someone with manslaughter for sending a text message many miles away that helped prompt somebody to commit suicide was a very controversial and noteworthy case. National significance, in the eyes of the Supreme Court, often correlates with prevalence. How frequent is this event about to occur? How widespread is the problem? How many people are affected? And I think it's fair to say that this type of case is somewhat idiosyncratic.
We've seen a similar case happen here in Boston involving the Boston College student who committed suicide and the charges against Inyoung You, his former girlfriend. But still, nationwide, it happens relatively rarely. And I think for that reason, the Supreme Court passed on it.
Mathieu: So, Daniel Medwed, is this the end of the case? Are any more legal challenges likely to be filed?
Medwed: It is not necessarily the end of her case. Yes, it is the end of what's called the direct appeal — the direct challenges to what happened at trial. But she does have the option of filing both a federal habeas corpus petition and state post-conviction relief. In terms of the federal habeas corpus petition, it's likely that she would raise constitutional issues [or] claims of constitutional error. With state post conviction relief, one of the vehicles open to her under the Massachusetts rules would involve the presentation of newly discovered evidence that suggests justice may not have been done.
So it remains to be seen whether she can cobble together that newly discovered evidence and whether she'll file a motion under that provision, which is known as Rule 30B. But I do anticipate at a minimum, a federal habeas corpus petition being filed within the next year or so.
