Edav Nomad

LOS ANGELES – A federal judge on Thursday tentatively threw out the convictions of a Missouri mother for her role in a MySpace hoax directed at a 13-year-old neighbor girl who ended up committing suicide.

U.S. District Judge George Wu said he was acquitting Lori Drew of misdemeanor counts of accessing computers without authorization but stressed the ruling was tentative until he issues it in writing. He noted the case of a judge who changed his mind after ruling.

Drew showed no reaction to the decision.

She was convicted in November, but the judge said that if she is to be found guilty of illegally accessing computers, anyone who has ever violated the social networking site's terms of service would be guilty of a misdemeanor. That would be unconstitutional, he said.

"You could prosecute pretty much anyone who violated terms of service," he said.

Prosecutors had sought the maximum three-year prison sentence and a $300,000 fine, but it had been uncertain going into Thursday's hearing whether Drew would be sentenced.

Wu had given a lengthy review to a defense request for dismissal, delaying sentencing from May to go over testimony from two prosecution witnesses.

Wu said he allowed the case to proceed to trial when Drew was charged with a felony, but she was convicted only of the misdemeanor and that presented constitutional problems.
Drew, whose bond was exonerated by the judge, did not appear with her attorney when he later spoke to reporters.
Defense attorney Dean Steward said outside court that the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles should not have brought the charges in a case that originated in Missouri and was rejected by prosecutors there.

"Shame on the U.S. attorney for bringing this case. The St. Louis prosecutors had it right," Steward said. "The cynic in me says that (U.S. Attorney) Tom O'Brien wanted to make a name for himself or to keep his job."

O'Brien told a press conference that after prosecutors see the written ruling they will consider options, including an appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

"I'm proud of this case," he said. "This is a case that called out for someone to do something. It was a risk. But this office will always take risks on behalf of children."

Steward said the ruling should mark the end of Drew's criminal case.

"It's not the end of the road, it's the end of the chapter on the criminal side, which is pretty clearly the end," he said.
The parents of Megan Meier, the teenager who killed herself, were in court for the ruling. Later, her mother, Tina Meier, said that in spite of the disappointment, she felt that justice was done because "we got the word out."

Tina Meier said she is devoting her life to educating parents and teachers about potential threats to their children lurking in the Internet.

Much attention has been paid to Drew's case, primarily because it was the nation's first cyberbullying trial. The trial was held in Los Angeles because the servers of the social networking site are in the area.

Prosecutors say Drew sought to humiliate Megan by helping create a fictitious teen boy on the social networking site and sending flirtatious messages to the girl in his name. The fake boy then dumped Megan in a message saying the world would be better without her.

She hanged herself a short time later in October 2006 in the St. Louis suburb of Dardenne Prairie, Mo.

Drew was not directly charged with causing Megan's death. Instead, prosecutors indicted her under the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which in the past has been used in hacking and trademark theft cases.

Wu acknowledged in May he was concerned that sending Drew to prison for violating a Web site's service terms might set a dangerous precedent. Wu at the time noted that millions of people either don't read service terms, as happened in Drew's case.

During the trial, prosecutors argued that Drew violated MySpace service rules by setting up the phony profile for a boy named "Josh Evans" with the help of her then-13-year-old daughter Sarah and business assistant Ashley Grills. They posted a photo of a bare-chested boy with tousled brown hair.

"Josh" then told Megan she was "sexi" and assured her, "i love you so much."

Prosecutors believe Drew and her daughter, who was friends with Megan, created the profile to find out if Megan was spreading rumors about Sarah. Grills testified she received a message from Megan in mid-2006, calling Drew's daughter a lesbian.

Grills, who testified under a promise of immunity, allegedly sent the final, insulting message to Megan before she killed herself. Prosecutors said Megan sent a response saying, "'You are the kind of boy a girl would kill herself over.'"

Jurors decided Drew was not guilty of the more serious felonies of intentionally causing emotional harm while accessing computers without authorization. The jury could not reach a unanimous verdict on a felony conspiracy charge. The judge dismissed it Thursday at the request of prosecutors.

Judge tentatively acquits woman in MySpace case - Yahoo! News

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Joshua Nightshade

It's a hard call on this. That woman should rot with the most serious punishments imaginable for a waste of life like her, but the way they were going about pinning charges on her held serious repercussions as legal precedents.

It really sucks when someone does something so wrong and needs to be punished for it, but there's no way to nail them without presenting an opportunity for the precedent to be abused further down the road.

Tess Whitcroft

I wonder if the parents of Megan Meier can file a wrongful death suit...


Tess

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Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscripti catapultas habebunt

Chip Midnight

I think this was the right thing to do. As petty and despicable as what this woman did was, she didn't kill that girl or break any laws aside from violating MySpace's terms of service. Prosecuting her for computer fraud just so they could charge her with something in an attempt to exact societal retribution and revenge was a flagrant abuse of both the law and the justice system. She has to suffer with the consequences her actions caused, and I'm sure that's no small thing, but at the end of the day she didn't kill Megan Meir. Megan Meir did.

Joshua Nightshade

No, I don't agree with this. Pushing an impressionable teenager into hurting themselves through emotional manipulation is what this woman did. She all but supplied the rope for that child to kill herself with. Whether she was responsible for the action or not she absolutely created the situation where it happened. I cannot in any way agree that what she did wasn't the same as murder.

Pussycat Catnap

That'd be their only recourse, though I suspect its not a winning strategy either.

Chip Midnight

If that were really true then we should be imprisoning every cruel teenager who teased and treated a classmate like shit until it pushed them over the edge. It was a terribly cruel prank this woman pulled, no doubt, but it was not a criminal act, and making it one would open up an enormous can of worms that's best left sealed. It also wasn't her actions alone. Is she also responsible for Megan Meir's chronic depression? As much as that might feel like a satisfying conclusion it's overly simplistic and unrealistic. Kids can be incredibly cruel (believe me I know. I had a big target painted on my back through my pre-teen and teenage years), and sometimes adults acting like children can be incredibly cruel, but she didn't kill that girl. The only one responsible for that is Megan Meir. The law simply can't be abused as a tool of revenge, and if this had stuck and she went to prison for it it would have been a miscarriage of justice.

Fmeh

She may have all but supplied the rope, but she did NOT kill her. Legally there was no recourse. If there was legal recourse, it would set a terrible precedent for people who say offensive things, and if we start to have to worry about what we say for the fear of being thrown in prison, what does freedom of speech eventually become?

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Joshua Nightshade

Maybe we should.

Fmeh

Looks like we basically said the same thing, you said it much more eloquently and with more verbosity.

Fmeh

I hope you're joking. I do not know whether I would want to live in a country that curtails free speech to that degree.

Joshua Nightshade

This woman didn't say offensive things; she took advantage of a lonely child, pretending to be her friend, then love interest, cultivating a relationship for someone suffering from depression and severe self-esteem issues, then told her to go kill herself.

This is not a student calling another student a fag. There's a monumental difference, and acting like this is a slippery slope to "zomg I can't insult someone else!" land is ridiculous.

Joshua Nightshade

And I don't want to live in one where people are allowed to bully others to the point of suicide without being punished for it.

Or do you like seeing things like Columbine on the television?

Fmeh

Do you want THIS future:

Joshua Nightshade

You're obviously woefully deficit with knowledge on the facts of this case. I suggest you read up on it before posting like this has anything at all to do with being legally unable to insult someone else.

Fmeh

There is a lot more that goes into why situations like that happen than just the bullying.

Pussycat Catnap

I don't know the facts of the case in detail, but other crimes that could have been considered might have related to;
- stalking
- harassment (rules for which could be anything in that jurisdiction)
- assault (tenuous on what I think were the facts)

I'm wondering also about felony murder - ie: when a death occurs during the commission of a felony, even if the persons who committed the felony did not commit the killing, it is first degree murder. But I forget what felonies qualify - and whether or not any of them could have reached to the facts here.

Civil action might involve:
- Intentional inflection of emotional distress
- Wrongful death (but I believe this one has limits which would prevent it applying...)

Prosecutors often mischarge, or fail to include relevant related charges, or overcharge...

I suspect in this case the prosecution went with the theory it did with the intention of trying to carve out a new legal theory - namely criminal sanctions for violating corporate set terms of service...
- That theory failed, and because of double jeopardy, the criminal goes free. That's what happens when prosecutors try to get creative rather than operate within proper bounds of law.

Chip Midnight

I don't know how you could practically legislate something like that, honestly. Where would you draw the line, and how many people would end up in prison for playing practical jokes that went horribly wrong? What if you had a volatile friend that was bipolar and happened to have a nasty fight with them on the wrong day and said something in the heat of the moment that was cruel and that happened to be the straw that broke them? Should you be culpable for their death? I don't believe so. There's simply too much gray area, no matter how cruel whatever you said was. I don't enjoy defending this woman, but the way they went after her was wrong.

Fmeh

I have read what it's about.

I was responding to your "Maybe we should." comment.

Fmeh

Precisely and exactly.

Joshua Nightshade

Editing away the extremely nasty personal attack you made might score points for people who read this thread later, but I still saw what you wrote.

Joshua Nightshade

As I recall they wanted to charge her with murder but couldn't get it to stick because she didn't actually kill the girl. The terms of service violation was an attempt to get anything at all so she would be punished for something. I don't think the goal had anything to do with trying to carve anything new out; they felt she needed to be punished for something and that was the only thing they felt they could charge her with.

Unfortunately there was nothing to charge her with because there's really no laws for "cyber bullying" or stalking.

Pussycat Catnap

Cyberstalking.

Make a cyber stalking statute that mirrors offline stalking laws, and requires specific aggravated intent (an express intention to stalk the person with the purpose of causing mental and/or physical distress)
- Then allow felony murder to attach when the stalking results in the death of someone connected during the commission of the crime.

The specific aggravated intent element would be used as a gatekeeper - to keep simple flame wars from getting wrapped in. Ie: You'd need facts to show the person took specific steps to bring real physical terror, distress, or physical harm to their victim. That would require showing the defendant knew exactly what they were up to and what that conduct could result in with that specific victim.

Joshua Nightshade

Yeah, there's grey areas, but that doesn't change the fact this is an issue that needs to be addressed.

I really don't see how anyone can examine this and seriously say "she wasn't responsible for the murder." She didn't just manipulate the girl, but also her employee and her daughter (and I believe another friend too.) When the girl killed herself, she told them all to be quiet about it. This is criminal behavior. All because she was mad that the girl said something mean to her daughter at school; that necessitated several months of patient courting only so she could humiliate the girl and "give her a taste of her own medicine."

This woman is sick, certainly unfit to be responsible for the well being of her children, and needed to be punished.

My only qualms are with the fact that in order to punish her, they would have made it a felony to break anyone's EULA. Given that those are already legally shaky to begin with, that's a serious danger.

But personally I would've been happy with them giving her thirty years in prison for jay-walking.

Fmeh

I said, verbatim: Forget it Josh--this is going to be yet one of those things where I'm (and everyone else) supposed to read what you say differently than how you wrote it, and in a different context than it originally was, to where you want to change what the context was and you'll start to go into personal attack mode, so I concede. You're right Josh. You're always right.

There, it's not "removed" now. Now the whole thread will be you and I bantering back and forth, like what happens between you and so many others on this forum, the thread getting hijacked because someone called Josh on his shit, but really just you bantering on how awful of a person I am because I don't want any part of this kind of shit with you anymore, which is why I removed it. But that's fine, let's bring it out in the open again and destroy the thread. Thanks.