A woman accused of cyber-bullying a teenager to death on MySpace was convicted on several misdemeanor charges, but the convictions have been overturned by the judge in the case.

Lori Drew, of O’Fallon, MO had been convicted on three misdemeanor counts by a jury in the case, in which Drew was one of a group of adults who posed as a teen-aged boy to harass a teenager who committed suicide because of their actions. That small group of adults made up a teen profile named Josh in order to befriend teen Megan Meier and find by deceit out what Megan was saying about Drew’s daughter on line.

In testimony in the case, another of the adults said that the fatal ruse was actually her idea, and that she had typed the statements which finally led to the suicide of the Megan Meier, according to a Wired article. The judge in the case was put off by the wording of the law being used to prosecute, which was basically an anti-hacking statute being used to fill in for actual law by comparing the violation of the MySpace terms of service with hacking.

There is no law against cyber-bullying, so the prosecution was stretching matters a little, too little, in order that someone be punished for the death of an innocent teenager. The judge, George Wu, said this about the case, the law, and his decision to overturn the conviction from the bench: “It basically leaves it up to a website owner to determine what is a crime. And therefore it criminalizes what would be a breach of contract.”

It could be looked at from another direction. It could easily be said that Judge Wu has just decriminalized murder. A group of adults conspired to lie to a child, and to do their best to confuse and mislead her. That group of adults, who should certainly have known better, and should certainly have had better ethics, could be seen as having gotten away with murder.

The prosecutor could have taken a different chance, and showed some courage, by prosecuting the adults for some variant of murder. The judge, instead of being so picky about the words, could have cared something about the spirit of the law. Instead, the two sides of the law in this case have conspired to make murder by lying and misrepresentation, murder of children by adults on the internet, an acceptable activity which is above the law.

Everyone in this case except the victim should be ashamed: the adults, the lawyers, the judges, every one of them. A young person died in O’Fallon, the victim of a mob of harassing adults. Where this happened, on the internet, is not a material fact. There was a crime, a young girl is dead, and no one cares enough to even make the prosecution of the guilty possible. That, in itself, is a shame.

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Entry was posted on Sunday, July 5th, 2009 at 4:57 pm under Crime, Internet, Legal.

Read more entries by Michael W. Jones.
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