Michelle Carter is set to be sentenced Thursday after being found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for sending text messages to her late boyfriend encouraging him to commit suicide when they were teenagers.
Carter's then-boyfriend Conrad Roy was 18 when he died from carbon monoxide poisoning in July 2014, ABC News noted. Roy had locked himself in his truck.
Although Carter was just 17 at the time, prosecutors argue that she caused Roy's death by telling him to get back in the truck. The prosecution said Roy wanted to live.
However, Carter's attorney said she previously tried to keep Roy from killing himself and he regretted involving her in his suicide plans.
In June, a Massachusetts judge found Carter, now 20, guilty of involuntary manslaughter, claiming she was "reckless" in the incident.
The judge said Carter told Roy "to get back into the truck well knowing of all of the feelings he [had] exchanged with her, his ambiguities, his fears, his concerns," ABC News noted.
"This court finds that instructing Mr. Roy to get back in the truck constituted wanton and reckless conduct," the judge added.
Carter could face up to 20 years in prison, according to The Washington Post.
"I believe she should be kept far away from society," Roy’s aunt, Kim Bozzi, wrote in a statement that she plans to read at the sentencing, according to the Boston Herald.
"Take away the spotlight that she so desperately craves. Twenty years may seem extreme but it is still twenty more than Conrad will ever have," Bozzi added.
Carter’s father, David Carter, however, is asking the court to have mercy on his daughter.
"She will forever live with what she has done and I know will be a better person because of it," he wrote in a letter, according to the Post. "I ask of you to invoke leniency in your decision-making process for my loving child Michelle."
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