we can’t play the “what if” game here, we can only talk about what is. And what is is that Lori Drew made some pre-meditated decisions to suggest an already emotionally unstable CHILD take her own life. Nothing is more cruel or heartless than that. Whether Mrs. Drew meant her suggestion or not isn’t the point, the point is that she made a decision so say those terrible things to Megan with some inclination of what the outcome may be. She isn’t a ten year old boy taunting a peer, she is a 49 year old GROWN UP who had a huge part in a young girl’s suicide.

She should be punished rightfully.

So which is better, “vigilante” justice, or no justice at all?

Far better to educate others so it doesn’t happen again. One way: support the Megan Meier Foundation.

We’ve seen plenty of examples in recent years that justifiable moral outrage can lead us to make terrible mistakes. If a case for manslaughter or child endangerment can be made against Lori Drew, that would be fantastic as far as I’m concerned. But cooking up highly questionable pretexts for criminal prosecution based on the MySpace terms of service is wrong, and it does put us all in danger.

It was more than simply “messing” with her. Lori Drew knew that Megan Meier had emotional instability problems, and (allegedly? yeah, whatever) used that knowledge to induce an uncontrolled emotional state in which Meier presented an immediate danger to herself.

In your little “thought experiment,” you miss that a teen girl who hounded another into suicide, would be doing it for kicks, just to see how far she could push the victim. It isn’t a “teen prank” when it’s a constant, deliberate action intended to cause emotional distress. It probably borders on a social disorder (look it up).

Lori Drew never grew up. Her adolescent behavior demonstrates that. If, at 49, she is still engaging in this kind of teenage viciousness, she needs to be removed from society.

@Adele: MySpace’s TOS only requires that users be at least 14 years old, which Megan Meier was not. However, I don’t know of any states that allow minors to enter into legal contracts without the consent of a parent or guardian, something never once mentioned in MySpace’s TOS or Privacy Policy.

She engaged other people in her criminal enterprise with a directed goal of causing this girl to commit suicide.

No. There is no reason to believe that Lori Drew or anyone involved in the conspiracy had a specific goal of causing Meier to commit suicide. There is some evidence that they had a specific goal of “messing” with her, “messing” with her is a different goal than causing her to commit suicide. The fact that the poor girl happened to respond by committing suicide does not retroactively make that suicide the goal of the conspiracy.

I am frankly terrified that many of my fellow citizens apparently do not see this key distinction, or are choosing to ignore it.

=darwin

In thinking about the legal issues involved in the Lori Drew case, I think it might be helpful to try the following thought experiment.

First, remove Lori Drew and the other adults from the case.

Apparently, the daughter had access to the fake account, so this is not entirely unreasonable. If what the mother did violated federal law, presumably the daughter also violated the same law as she participated in the same conspiracy and accessed the same account.

Subtracting the adults, we are left with is a 13 year old girl registering a fake account on a website and using it to be mean to another girl in her class.

The registering of the fake account, violating the terms of service, is apparently what makes it federally illegal. So, let’s remove the technology and the way the prosecutor is applying the contract language from the equation and imagine instead that the correspondence occurred in real life, without an intermediating third party. Let’s say, for example, that the notes from “Josh” were slipped into the target’s locker.

What we are left with is a teenage girl playing a mean prank on another teenage girl and that girl ends up with her feelings hurt. You know, the sort of thing which has happened all day, every day, in every high school in the history of high school.

Yes, it is bad that teenagers bully each other and are mean to each other. No, it should not be a federal crime carrying a possible sentence of five years for hacking, even if it happens on the internet, violates Terms Of Service and the victim happens to react very badly to the bullying.

There is no legal right to not have your feelings hurt.

=darwin