Woman Guilty In MySpace Bullying Case

November 27, 2008 By Digital Trends Staff

Woman Guilty In MySpace Bullying Case

Lori Drew has been convicted on three counts of gaining unauthorized access to MySpace in a cyberbullying case that led to the suicide of a teenage girl.

Lori Drew, the 49-year-old Missouri women alleged to have precipitated the suicide of a teenage girl through cyberbullying, has been found guilty of three counts of unauthorized access to MySpace.

However, she was found not guilty of three more serious felonies of violating the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Each of the guilty verdicts carries a possible penalty of a year in jail and a $100,000 fine. It’s believed Drew will not receive prison time, and her lawyers have already filed an appeal on one of the charges.

The case was tried in Los Angeles, home of MySpace’s servers, because authorities in Missouri could find no charges to file locally.

Showing 1 comment

Fred Moolten at 9:49am 27th November 2008 In my view, the verdict in this case was reasonable, if anything could be called "reasonable" in light of the human tragedy involved. Lori Drew was neither innocent nor a murderer. Her irresponsible disregard for the potential harm in the scheme she facilitated deserved not only moral but legal redress, particularly given her status as a middle-aged parent involved in conflicts between adolescents. Whether the legal validity of the verdict will be upheld on appeal remains to be seen, but the law has always used tools at its disposable to achieve justice, even when the tools were designed for different circumstances, and this is an appropriate mechanism if not abused. It's worth recalling that Al Capone, the murderous boss of the Chicago crime syndicate many decades ago, escaped imprisonment until he was finally convicted and sentenced for tax evasion - having failed to report the income from his criminal activities.