Myspace Acquittal

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

http://randazza.wordpress.com/2009/07/02/drew-tentatively-acquitted-in-myspace-suicide-case/

I PREDICTED THIS. IT DOESNT EXCUSE WHAT THE WOMAN DID, BUT THERE ARE NO LAWS THAT COVER WHAT SHE DID. OTHERWISE THE GOVERNMENT CAN TOSS YOU IN PRISON FOR LYING ABOUT YOUR AGE OR WEIGHT OR WHATEVER WHEN YOU SIGN-UP FOR AN ONLINE ACCOUNT.

 

[TE999]

http://randazza.wordpress.com/2009/07/02/drew-tentatively-acquitted-in-myspace-suicide-case/

I PREDICTED THIS. IT DOESNT EXCUSE WHAT THE WOMAN DID, BUT THERE ARE NO LAWS THAT COVER WHAT SHE DID. OTHERWISE THE GOVERNMENT CAN TOSS YOU IN PRISON FOR LYING ABOUT YOUR AGE OR WEIGHT OR WHATEVER WHEN YOU SIGN-UP FOR AN ONLINE ACCOUNT.

I expected as much out of this case. The woman was a POS for doing it and she'll have to live with what she did for the rest of her life, assuming she has a concience.

I'd guess 86% of the people on those sites are lying like rugs when they post their profiles.

 

[Boxlicker101]

I wasn't really surprised either. The bitch might have been better off doing a short sentence, because now somebody might take some kind of vigilante action. I'm not saying they will, but it is possible.

There are no winners here. The woman and her daughter will have to live with it for the rest of their lives and might be shunned by everybody around them.

 

[Pure]

thanks, jbj

for the posting.

yes, i agree. there was apparently no law against what the woman did. prosecution for violation of TOS would be a scary precedent; even folks in this forum have probably violated such things.

you can't even call it 'harassment', really. it's causing death by false pretense. as if i were to court someone [pretending to be something i'm not], break her heart [with the truth], and have that followed by her suicide. ugliest thing imaginable, but making the causal link to the last event is dicey [as in the case mentioned in the OP], and further establishing intention even moreso [e.g. is only upset intended? or actual death]. laws cannot cover every way people have been vile to others.

 

[Pure]

some refs, urls

good discussion of some issues, before the present dismissal; predicting it.

http://johndozierjr.typepad.com/doz...aw-myspace-suicide-case-dismissal-coming.html

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/03/us/03bully.html?_r=1&ref=us
Judge Throws Out Conviction in Cyberbullying Case

By REBECCA CATHCART
Published: July 2, 2009
LOS ANGELES — A federal judge on Thursday threw out the conviction of a Missouri woman on charges of computer fraud for her role in creating a false MySpace account to dupe a teenager, who later committed suicide.
The judge, George H. Wu, said that he was tentatively acquitting the woman, Lori Drew, of misdemeanor counts of gaining access to computers without authorization and that the ruling would be final when he issued his written decision.
In November, a federal jury here convicted Ms. Drew of three misdemeanor charges under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a federal law intended to combat computer crimes. Legal experts followed the case closely, saying it was the first time the statute had been used to prosecute a patron of a social networking site for abuses of the site.
But on Thursday, Judge Wu said the federal statute was too “vague” when applied in this case and that were he to allow Ms. Drew’s conviction to stand, “one could literally prosecute anyone who violates a terms of service agreement” in any way.
The United States attorney in Los Angeles, Thomas P. O’Brien, who brought the case, said a dismissal would leave open the possibility of an appeal. “Once the decision becomes final,” he said, “we’ll consider our options.”

Ms. Drew left the courtroom smiling but said nothing.
Prosecutors had sought a maximum sentence of three years in prison and a $300,000 fine. In May, probation officials recommended that Ms. Drew be placed on one year of probation and fined $5,000.

Prosecutors said Ms. Drew, with the help of her daughter and a family friend who worked for Ms. Drew, had created a phony identity and MySpace account for a teenage boy, “Josh Evans,” on a computer in Ms. Drew’s home in suburban St. Louis. According to evidence at the trial, Ms. Drew then used the account to conduct an online courtship with Megan Meier, an emotionally disturbed 13-year-old girl who had once been a friend of her daughter.

One afternoon in October 2006, the evidence showed, Megan received an e-mail message from “Josh” that said, “The world would be a better place without you.” She shortly wrote back, “You’re the kind of boy a girl would kill herself over,” and then hanged herself in her bedroom.

Neither Ms. Drew’s daughter, Sarah, nor the family friend, Ashley Grills, was charged.
Mr. O’Brien brought the case here, where MySpace keeps its servers, after law enforcement officials in Missouri said Ms. Drew had broken no local laws.
Some experts in cyberbullying and computer fraud criticized prosecutors for using the computer fraud law against Ms. Drew.

“This law was designed to criminalize computer hacking, not people going to a Web site and violating terms of service that can be obscure and frankly arbitrary,” said Matthew L. Levine, a former federal prosecutor and defense lawyer in New York. “This sets a very bad precedent of using this law for that purpose.”
After Judge Wu announced his decision, a visibly emotional Mr. O’Brien acknowledged that applying the statute “was a risk.”

“This was a case that cried out for someone to do something,” he said.
Ms. Drew’s lawyer, Dean Steward, said that prosecutors “should never have brought these charges” and that Judge Wu should have thrown the case out when the defense first sought a dismissal eight months ago, before the jury reached its verdict.

 

[ms.read]

wow I can't believe that they didn't charge her for murder, because through her actions she caused that girl to kill herself. Fuckin' Bitch got off light.

 

[Pure]

causing someone to kill themselve by posting messages to them, is not murder, even if the intent could be proven, which it can't, usually.

 

[Boxlicker101]

causing someone to kill themselve by posting messages to them, is not murder, even if the intent could be proven, which it can't, usually.

I don't believe you would need intent, because people have been convicted of manslaughter even when there was no intent to hurt anybody. At the same time, nobody could have foreseen the girl hanging herself over being jilted. The same kind of thing happens to tens of millions of people, and hardly anybody commits suicide over it. It was a really mean trick but, if I had been sitting on a jury, I probably would have had to find her not guilty. You notice, I did not say "innocent" because she was certainly not that.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I learned many nasty tricks from my courtroom experiences. Over 20 years I participated in 1000s of trials. If you know people well enough you can manipulate them to act-out in ways that harm them. And when they do it before God and the Judge, theyre fucked. I lost ONE trial in 20 years.

Lawyers set snares all the time. And I've seen smart lawyers hang their client's intentionally, but deftly. There really are lawyers who dislike the scumbags they have to serve.

It is offensive when a kid is pushed over the edge. Pushed may be the wrong word. Encouraged? Stressed? Whatever it is, it was premeditated and done with malice.

 

[ms.read]

Jbj I have to agree with you.

 

[Pure]

i wonder

what a law would look like, under which she could be convicted:

(with intent)
a) bringing about a suicide through communications, only. (consider, for example, jilting)

b) bringing about a death through communications, only. (yes, i suppose if someone is driving a road, and asks directions, and you say 'straight ahead... and speed up and go across the bridge without slowing down'-- and the bridge is out!.)

c) bringing about a death through deception and/or saying upsetting things (only). (courting using a number of deceptions, and then being found out, and having the person kill themselves?)

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the only way that i can envision a criminal issue is IF you could assume a fiduciary duty: IF a person were someone's parent, doctor, or shrink, they have some positive dutiies not to upset the child/client extremely; harm their welfare.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

PURE

Most mental health agencies already require staff to be as hospitable and inoffensive as humanly possible. And sometimes the policy creates absurd and bizarre events. I left the profession when psychiatry became part of the hospitality industry and our hospital became a resort. I was trained to fix people, fix them quickly, and get them back on the road as soon as possible.

And that means sometimes you have to traumatize people in therapeutic ways. Like surgery is controlled and therapeutic violence to the body. The right insult will pull you out of a suicidal depression in a finger-snap. If I can make you mad enough you'll want to kill me, not yourself. But God help you if you use the wrong insult; you have to sense which issue is already spring-loaded to eject the person from the depression.