Malicious Mother Convicted in MySpace Suicide Case
Personally, this woman should have been convicted of murder... Her actions were immoral, unethical, incomprehensible, emotionally abusive and led to someone's death.
I hope the public humiliation and hopefully jail time and restitution (even though no amount will bring this family's daughter back) will teach her and others a lesson. Having been the brunt of similar cruelty for speaking truth, I can only hope Drew cleans up her act. Though I doubt it. I wouldn't treat an animal that way.
If you have been keeping up with this story - Drew filed a police report on Megan Meier's parents because they destroyed the Drews' foosball table when they found out. And she told the Meier family to "give it a rest."
Rot in hell, Mrs. Drew.
I hope the Meiers now move to Civil Court and sue Drew for "Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress" and Cyberstalking.
Lori Drew, the 49-year-old woman charged in the first federal cyberbullying case, was cleared of felony computer-hacking charges by a jury Wednesday morning, but convicted of three misdemeanors. The jury deadlocked on a remaining felony charge of conspiracy.
After just over a day of deliberation, the six-man, six-woman jury acquitted Drew of three felony charges of violating the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, in an emotionally charged case that stemmed from a 2006 MySpace hoax targeting a 13-year-old girl, who later committed suicide.
Tina Meier, the mother of the girl, shook her head silently from the gallery as the verdict was read.
Prosecutors claimed Drew and others obtained unauthorized access to MySpace by creating a fake profile for a nonexistent 16-year-old boy named "Josh Evans." The account was used to flirt with, and then reject, 13-year-old old Megan Meier. The case hinged on the government's novel argument that violating MySpace's terms of service for the purpose of harming another was the legal equivalent of computer hacking, and Drew faced a maximum sentence of five years in prison for each charge.
But on Wednesday, jurors found Drew guilty only of three counts of gaining unauthorized access to MySpace for the purpose of obtaining information on Megan Meier — misdemeanors that potentially carry up to a year in prison, but most likely will result in no time in custody. The jury unanimously rejected the three felony computer hacking charges that alleged the unauthorized access was part of a scheme to intentionally inflict emotional distress on Megan.
U.S. District Judge George Wu has not yet ruled on a defense motion that, if granted, would overturn even the misdemeanors for lack of evidence, and result in a judgment of acquittal. It's also unclear whether the government will seek a new trial on the deadlocked conspiracy charge.
The slap-on-the-wrist verdict is a partial rebuke to federal prosecutors, who chose to charge Drew federally even after authorities in Missouri — where the hoax unfolded — found that Drew's behavior did not violate any state laws at the time. Some legal experts and civil libertarians decried the prosecution as an abuse of computer-crime laws.
Underscoring the importance of the high-profile case to the government, Thomas O'Brien, U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, personally oversaw the prosecution and handled some of the witness testimony himself. O'Brien was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2007 to oversee the 266 federal prosecutors in the second-largest U.S. Attorney's office in the country.
The verdict followed three days of testimony by 15 witnesses.
The indictment charged that in September 2006 Drew conspired to create the Josh Evans account with her then 13-year-old daughter, Sarah, and a then-18-year-old employee and family friend named Ashley Grills, for the purpose of inflicting psychological harm on Meier.
Prosecutors alleged that Drew and the two others used the profile to lure Megan into an online relationship with "Josh" to find out what Megan was saying about Drew's daughter online. Midway through the ruse, prosecutors said Drew changed the plan and wanted to print out the correspondence between Megan and the fake boy in order to confront her with the pages in public and humiliate her.
That confrontation never occurred. But after "Josh" turned on Megan and told her he wanted to sever their relationship, Megan hanged herself in her bedroom in October 2006.
Neighbors in O'Fallon, Missouri, the small town where the Drews and Meiers lived four houses away from each other, turned on Drew when her supposed complicity in the hoax emerged. They called her a murderer, Lori Drew's father testified Monday.
A year after Megan's death, her great-aunt Vicki Dunn contacted a local newspaper columnist who wrote about the case but didn't identify Drew in the article, since she hadn't been charged with any crime. The piece was picked up by numerous publications, sparking a frenzy among bloggers and others, who outed Drew's name and published her address and phone number online.
The Drews and their business associates received harassing calls and death threats. Sarah Drew testified that her school asked her to leave after officials concluded they could not control the bullying she was receiving from other students. A former business associate of Drew testified that a parent at her child's school asked her why she did business with a "murderer."
Publicity over the suicide prompted county prosecutors to review the case to determine if charges could be filed against Drew, but they were stymied by the fact that there was no criminal law addressing the cyberbullying that Drew was alleged to have committed.
That's when prosecutors in Los Angeles sought to indict Drew, charging her with unauthorized access to MySpace's computers, using a federal anti-hacking statute known as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Prosecutors charged that Drew was guilty of the crime by violating MySpace's terms-of-service agreement when she and her co-conspirators allegedly provided false information to open the account and pose online as the 16-year-old boy.
MySpace's user agreement requires registrants, among other things, to provide factual information about themselves and to refrain from soliciting personal information from minors or using information obtained from MySpace services to harass or harm other people. By allegedly violating that click-to-agree contract, Drew committed the same crime as any hacker, prosecutors claimed.
The novel use of the statute was criticized by numerous legal experts who said the case set a "scary" precedent and potentially made a felon out of anyone who violates the terms-of-service of any website.
MORE:
Copy of the Original Indictment
The MySpace Suicide Story
Lori Drew INTENDED to Prey on Dead Girl's Psyche
Jury Pool Hates Lori Drew
JURY FINDS DREW GUILTY ON MISDEMEANOR CHARGES
I hope the public humiliation and hopefully jail time and restitution (even though no amount will bring this family's daughter back) will teach her and others a lesson. Having been the brunt of similar cruelty for speaking truth, I can only hope Drew cleans up her act. Though I doubt it. I wouldn't treat an animal that way.
If you have been keeping up with this story - Drew filed a police report on Megan Meier's parents because they destroyed the Drews' foosball table when they found out. And she told the Meier family to "give it a rest."
Rot in hell, Mrs. Drew.
I hope the Meiers now move to Civil Court and sue Drew for "Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress" and Cyberstalking.
Lori Drew, the 49-year-old woman charged in the first federal cyberbullying case, was cleared of felony computer-hacking charges by a jury Wednesday morning, but convicted of three misdemeanors. The jury deadlocked on a remaining felony charge of conspiracy.After just over a day of deliberation, the six-man, six-woman jury acquitted Drew of three felony charges of violating the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, in an emotionally charged case that stemmed from a 2006 MySpace hoax targeting a 13-year-old girl, who later committed suicide.
Tina Meier, the mother of the girl, shook her head silently from the gallery as the verdict was read.
Prosecutors claimed Drew and others obtained unauthorized access to MySpace by creating a fake profile for a nonexistent 16-year-old boy named "Josh Evans." The account was used to flirt with, and then reject, 13-year-old old Megan Meier. The case hinged on the government's novel argument that violating MySpace's terms of service for the purpose of harming another was the legal equivalent of computer hacking, and Drew faced a maximum sentence of five years in prison for each charge.
But on Wednesday, jurors found Drew guilty only of three counts of gaining unauthorized access to MySpace for the purpose of obtaining information on Megan Meier — misdemeanors that potentially carry up to a year in prison, but most likely will result in no time in custody. The jury unanimously rejected the three felony computer hacking charges that alleged the unauthorized access was part of a scheme to intentionally inflict emotional distress on Megan.
U.S. District Judge George Wu has not yet ruled on a defense motion that, if granted, would overturn even the misdemeanors for lack of evidence, and result in a judgment of acquittal. It's also unclear whether the government will seek a new trial on the deadlocked conspiracy charge.
The slap-on-the-wrist verdict is a partial rebuke to federal prosecutors, who chose to charge Drew federally even after authorities in Missouri — where the hoax unfolded — found that Drew's behavior did not violate any state laws at the time. Some legal experts and civil libertarians decried the prosecution as an abuse of computer-crime laws.
Underscoring the importance of the high-profile case to the government, Thomas O'Brien, U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, personally oversaw the prosecution and handled some of the witness testimony himself. O'Brien was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2007 to oversee the 266 federal prosecutors in the second-largest U.S. Attorney's office in the country.
The verdict followed three days of testimony by 15 witnesses.
The indictment charged that in September 2006 Drew conspired to create the Josh Evans account with her then 13-year-old daughter, Sarah, and a then-18-year-old employee and family friend named Ashley Grills, for the purpose of inflicting psychological harm on Meier.
Prosecutors alleged that Drew and the two others used the profile to lure Megan into an online relationship with "Josh" to find out what Megan was saying about Drew's daughter online. Midway through the ruse, prosecutors said Drew changed the plan and wanted to print out the correspondence between Megan and the fake boy in order to confront her with the pages in public and humiliate her.
That confrontation never occurred. But after "Josh" turned on Megan and told her he wanted to sever their relationship, Megan hanged herself in her bedroom in October 2006.
Neighbors in O'Fallon, Missouri, the small town where the Drews and Meiers lived four houses away from each other, turned on Drew when her supposed complicity in the hoax emerged. They called her a murderer, Lori Drew's father testified Monday.
A year after Megan's death, her great-aunt Vicki Dunn contacted a local newspaper columnist who wrote about the case but didn't identify Drew in the article, since she hadn't been charged with any crime. The piece was picked up by numerous publications, sparking a frenzy among bloggers and others, who outed Drew's name and published her address and phone number online.
The Drews and their business associates received harassing calls and death threats. Sarah Drew testified that her school asked her to leave after officials concluded they could not control the bullying she was receiving from other students. A former business associate of Drew testified that a parent at her child's school asked her why she did business with a "murderer."
Publicity over the suicide prompted county prosecutors to review the case to determine if charges could be filed against Drew, but they were stymied by the fact that there was no criminal law addressing the cyberbullying that Drew was alleged to have committed.
That's when prosecutors in Los Angeles sought to indict Drew, charging her with unauthorized access to MySpace's computers, using a federal anti-hacking statute known as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Prosecutors charged that Drew was guilty of the crime by violating MySpace's terms-of-service agreement when she and her co-conspirators allegedly provided false information to open the account and pose online as the 16-year-old boy.
MySpace's user agreement requires registrants, among other things, to provide factual information about themselves and to refrain from soliciting personal information from minors or using information obtained from MySpace services to harass or harm other people. By allegedly violating that click-to-agree contract, Drew committed the same crime as any hacker, prosecutors claimed.
The novel use of the statute was criticized by numerous legal experts who said the case set a "scary" precedent and potentially made a felon out of anyone who violates the terms-of-service of any website.
MORE:
Copy of the Original Indictment
The MySpace Suicide Story
Lori Drew INTENDED to Prey on Dead Girl's Psyche
Jury Pool Hates Lori Drew
JURY FINDS DREW GUILTY ON MISDEMEANOR CHARGES
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