A Massachusetts Juvenile Court judge has handed down his sentence in the case of Michelle Carter. You will recall that the then 17 year old Carter was the girl who encouraged Conrad Roy to “just do it” and kill himself by sending a series of text messages to the young man. Though prosecutors had been looking for a longer stretch in prison than many murderers wind up getting, Judge Moniz decided on a considerably shorter jail stay with only part of it being mandatory. (NBC News)

A Massachusetts woman showed little emotion as she was sentenced to 15 months in jail on Thursday for coercing her boyfriend via text to kill himself.

Bristol County Juvenile Court Judge Lawrence Moniz found Michelle Carter, 20, guilty of involuntary manslaughter in June for encouraging Conrad Roy III, 18, to take his own life in July 2014 after prosecutors successfully argued the then 17-year-old was an attention-seeking teen, desperate to play the grieving girlfriend. She had faced up to 20 years in prison.

Moniz gave her a 2.5 year sentence and said only 15 months was mandatory.

Even the 15 months may still be avoided because the judge is allowing carter to remain free while her appeals play out. That’s actually the most productive part of the decision because I still remain hopeful that a higher court may look this case over and realize that Carter wasn’t guilty of anything other than being a terrible human being.

Since I wrote about this when the initial guilty verdict was handed down I won’t go over the entire case again here, but this decision remains a travesty. Michelle Carter appears to be a simply horrible person based on all of the evidence which has been made available to the public. I certainly wouldn’t want to hang out with her nor would I want any of my friends or relatives doing so. Anyone who could push so hard to convince an otherwise healthy and normal young man who she ostensibly cared about to end his life is definitely lacking in the milk of human kindness.

So she’s a terrible person. But under the laws of the United States of America we don’t lock someone up for being a terrible person. Carter was miles away from the scene of the “crime” on the night in question and was only in contact with the deceased via text messages over their phones. Conrad Roy had the ability to get out of that car and save his own life and in fact did so at one point. Despite the urging and badgering coming from Carter, there was only one person who put Roy back in the vehicle to die and that was Roy himself.

Counter-arguments I keep hearing about how his mental condition made him particularly vulnerable leading to Carter having some sort of “responsibility” for his welfare carry no weight. She was not his doctor. Nor was she a first responder of any sort. She was his girlfriend. Roy was responsible for his own actions and if he was mentally incompetent to serve as his own guardian then his family should have stepped in and appointed someone to oversee him.

If Michelle Carter belongs in jail for the crime of acting like a crappy human being then we’d better start building a lot more jails. I’m guessing every one of you knows at least one or two people who are simply horrible. Shall we just start locking them all up?