Landmark MySpace Suicide Trial Begins Jury Selection
The landmark trial of a Missouri woman alleged to have used a counterfeit MySpace profile to bully a young teen girl who later committed suicide is now in its initial jury selection phase.
The trial is the first time the federal statute on accessing protected computers has been used in a social networking case.
Lori Drew, 49 of St. Louis, MO, allegedly posed as a boy on the MySpace social networking Web site, and befriended 13-year-old Megan Meier, who later hanged herself in October 2006 after the "boy" discontinued the virtual relationship.
Ms. Drew has denied the charges of conspiracy and unlawfully accessing protected computers.
Megan was a neighbor to Ms. Drew and a former friend of her daughter. Authorities allege that Megan committed suicide after receiving several cruel messages from a 16-year-old fictitious boy named Josh Evans, including one that said the world would be better off without her.
Prosecutors say Ms. Drew and several others created the boy on MySpace, after Megan had a falling out with Ms. Drew’s daughter.
In a trial widely viewed as a landmark case concerning Internet law, Ms. Drew is being charged under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Each of the four counts against her carries a maximum five-year jail term.
Such charges are traditionally usually used against computer hackers, but prosecutors were unable to find any existing Missouri state laws under which Ms. Drew could be tried.
However, Ms. Drew is not being charged in the death of Ms. Meier, and District Judge George Wu had even considered excluding evidence of the suicide from the trial. He later dismissed the exclusion after deciding that jurors would most likely already be aware of the details.
But lawyers for Ms. Drew expressed concern that a jury might still confuse the issue and "conclude it’s about the tragic death of a young girl".
"The jury is going to end up thinking that Lori Drew is being tried for the death of Megan Meier," said Dean Steward.
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