Mother pleads not guilty in cyber-bullying suicide test case

"US legal experts....

.... are worried that a succesful(sic) prosecution could criminalise anyone who posts fake information online."

Why? We should be dealing with a world of truth. Fake information = LIE - I don't see what's wrong with prosecuting liars especially if they have lied for malicious or criminal reasons which this woman allegedly did.

Or, is it because "US legal experts" will find themselves prosecuted for lying ??

I don't see what's wrong with prosecuting liars

My name isn't really b.

Do you want to prosecute me?

They will never make that stick

But they don't need to, surely her actions had the objective on giving distress to someone .

There must be a plethorer of "hate" laws etc they can call on, rather than thinking "OH NOES ITS DA INTERWEB!"!! MAKE NEW LAWS TO COVER OLD CRIMES"

But then they are yanks, and therefore dumb

Why don't they use the same laws as they use against groomers?

Seems to be exactly the same as grooming, just with different motives.

RE: James

That is the whole point. She was a nasty person, but did not do anything illegal. Well, except the "network accessing" crap. These laws are anti hacker laws, not anti lying laws.

They are abusing the law to charge this woman for something. This sets a very worrying precedent, as it means that we have reached a point where the government (well the US gov) think that it is ok to try and prosecute someone like this. It is a witch hunt.

I do think that woman is a horrible person and a bully, but you can make laws about that.

@James

How little of this story do you even understand? If she had lied to cover up a Crime they would already be prosecuting her for the crime itself. The sheer enormity of the folly which is trying to criminalise all lieing is something I would of hoped was self evident.

@James

> Fake information = LIE

Really? So you'd like to see The Onion prosecuted...?

What if 'Josh Evans' had spurned her

What if I accidentally hit you with my car?

What if I go out of my way to run you over?

And "The world would be a better place without you" goes a little beyond spurning.

I hope the case fails tbh as it sets a dangerous precedent. That's not to say a meteorite strike on this vile woman wouldn't be welcomed.

if liars were to be prosecuted

it would be a long queue of politicians. However, she is an evil bitch and I hope she will be locked up for messing around with the kids, troubled or otherwise.

Surely the lawyers would be happy

If posting fake information online becomes a crime (and why not?) then lawyers stand to make a lot more money. Since 99% of legal experts are surely qualified lawyers (it would be hard to be called a legal expert otherwise) then this would mean legal experts would be gleeful at the prospect.

re: Alternatively..

Absolutely, Dan.

Also, I remember reading about this story months ago when the suicide happened, that the content of the emails between them became sexually explicit - and instigated by Drew.

Although at the time, the police line was 'she hasn't broken the law', a number of journalists asked if Drew had been a 47-year man that began corresponding with a 13-year girl, pretending he was a teenager, and eventually got her to engage in sexually explicit emails, would the authorities have taken a similarly laissez-faire attitude?

@ Iain

You're quite right - actually, in this this case, the girl was a rather troubled and vulnerable child, something that Drew was only too aware of.

Worth pointing out that Drew has NEVER expressed any regret over the tragic turn of events - in terms of whether of what she did or the girl's death.

Terms of Service

She is being prosecuted for breaking the myspace Terms of Service, not lieing (although lieing what what broke the terms of service, she's not being prosucted for that specifially).

So this doesn't criminalise lieing on the internet, it criminalises breaking Terms of Service on the internet, which is much much worse IMO. I'm sure most internet users have broken some of the terms of services that they've blindly aggreed to at some point, this would effectively make anything someone rights in a Terms of Service aggreement legally binding with a possible 20 year prison sentence!

Glad I don't live in the US....

Do you use any brain cells?

Just because you have a car, and you drive it around town... doesn't make you guilty of vehicular manslaughter. However, how you drive it could have adverse affects which could affect others.

The mother clearly created this account to do harm. I don't think the mother thought it would cause this much harm, however this is due to her own ignorance. A psychologist would have predicted this outcome, and if you think about it for a few moments, and all the depressive suicides you have read (or know) about, you can see this outcome was probable.

Did the mother pull the trigger? No. However, she was definitely an accomplice of sorts when she made the decision to create this account to cause harm; even if it was just emotional harm.

This mother herself should believe this is a serious act. After all, she believed the deceased girl herself caused harm to her daughter. What the deceased did, was no where near as costly or serious, and the mother believed she should be punished. It would be hipocritical to believe otherwise.

I don't agree with what Drew did, but ...

I don't agree with what Drew did, but, I'm also in agreement that she really didn't break any laws. I'm from the St. Louis area (Yea, I'm a Yank), so I've probably heard more details on this than the average person. What Drew said (in her alter person, Josh) was not really anything that an average teen would not have said in real life. Don't know if the teens on the right side of the pond talk like this, or even if they talk that way in other parts of the US. But, if you listen to teens, especially those in their early teens talk, such a statement 'the world would be better off without you' would be pretty common. If this pushed Megan over the edge, she was on the verge of going over anyway.

My big fear is the slippery slope we'll be on if this case is deemed to have any merit at all.

@Geoff Gale

"for accessing protected computers without authorization"

The above quote appears a lot in the things she was charged for, and the basis for saying she accessed computers without authorisation is that she had violated the myspace ToS, therefore losing her permission to access/use the myspace website.

At least this is my understanding from the coverage I've read.

Quoting from other register articles on the subject:

"prosecutors charged Lori Drew with conspiracy and hacking for violating MySpace terms of service that, among other things, forbid the creation of fictitious accounts"

"The indictment charges Drew, a resident of O'Fallon, Missouri, with three counts of unauthorized access by violation of MySpace's terms of service and one count of conspiracy."

Although, if they were wrong then I appologise, since I haven't checked any other sources...

The point is...

... surely the key issue here is that she deliberately tried to distress someone.

I will never give my personal details out online unless I have to. Last time somebody talked me into it they proceeded to try to persuade me to pay their plane fare. No thanks, I don't want to be scammed.

You're missing a big point...

IANAL, and do not live in the USA; but if memory serves, isn't there a statute which states that if you commit a felony act and a death occurs during, or in direct correlation to, that act then you are guilty of manslaughter *even if it wasn't your original intent*.

Soooo.... step 1: find her guilty of a felony act (the original 4 charges). step 2: Now that it is established it was a felony act, the DPO (or whatever the local equivalent is) can slap a manslaughter charge on top.

Or am I reading too much into this?

@@ Chris Campbell

The thing is, Chris, the legal world is divided into two basic types of law. The first is civil law which is generally concerned with contracts, relationships and property issues. The second is criminal law and is the domain of government entities under the direction of Prosecutors, District Attorneys, Attorneys General, etc.

Ms. Drew is under indictment by a criminal grand jury for criminal offences that have to do with inflicting emotional distress and ultimately leading to the young woman's death. She used MySpace fraudulently to cause harm to another person. Most noteworthy, she will likely serve time in jail should she be found guilty.

Now if MySpace wanted to pursue Ms. Drew for violating their ToS, they would have to file suit against her and work the matter through to settlement. The punishment for such an infraction would likely come in the form of a payment to MySpace by Ms. Drew.

It may seem a subtle distinction, but there's really a world of difference - criminal cases end up in jail terms, probation, or suspended sentence while civil cases end up in divorce or monetary judgments or something similar.

<no title>

Surely, by definition, one can not intend manslaughter?

I doubt that the woman expected it to end as it did, but from reading the article it looks as if she may well be the cause of the girl's suicide: but that is for the court to decide. Seems to me that she ought not get off scot-free

As for using a pseudonym being hacking (even using the term in the way the media does now :() well surely that claim will fall flat on its face if there is anyone with any sense in the courtroom --- oh right, silly me, it'll stick like superglue then.

to my understanding....

this lady actually committed a series of misdemeanours, which isn’t much, like going 75 on the motorway (if a police officer sees you he wont really care). but according to the us attorneys office she committed a tortuous act which elevating the charges to felonies.

so why are legal experts worried about this case, any terms of service violation will still be classed as a misdemeanour, not a felony, so the most you would get is a slap on the wrist. it is an important case because it may be able to go some way to prosecute groomers, but your average day to day violator (like you and me) shouldn’t have anything to worry about.

Child abuse

Because of the dangerous precedent it would set, I hope the prosecution fails. I also hope that the woman who did this awful thing is forced to spend all her savings and to remortgage her house to pay for her lawyers, and that she ends up bankrupt.

What she is morally guilty of is nothing less than child abuse. Just because there wasn't a law against this particular sort of abuse, it doesn't mean she shouldn't be made to suffer for it.

Sad but

sounds like the girl was having a lot of problems anyway. I had abuse like this (verbal not Internet) as a teenager and didn't top myself. I understand it happens to quite a lot of people.

I think there are enough problems in the world that can be prosecuted without going out of our way to find new ones. The woman is a sick nutter, the parents of the deceased may not have helped too much either.

Sorry, I forgot my NuLabour philosophy "This must NEVER happen again", let's log all Internet access, have cameras in every home, put the woman in jail for life, start a MySpace tax and government registration system......