Michelle Carter was released from prison today, just three months shy of her full 15-month sentence. The Massachusetts woman will now begin five years of supervised release, aka probation. According to The Washington Post, Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson cited Carter's good behavior for the early emancipation.
Carter's case first attracted national attention in 2014. When Carter was 17, she was charged with and ultimately convicted for manslaughter for encouraging her boyfriend, Conrad Roy III, to commit suicide. As such, the texting-suicide case —chronicled in HBO's two-part documentary, I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth Vs. Michelle Carter —was a complicated confluence of free speech, mental health and teenage relationships.
According to the Boston Herald, the family of Carter's late boyfriend dissented with her early release. "The sheriff should serve the rest of her time," Roy's grandfather, Conrad Roy told the newspaper. "He lets her go because she's a good girl? She's not a good girl."
Carter's release follows the Supreme Court declining her lawyers' appeals to overturn her involuntary manslaughter conviction in Roy III's death.
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