Dismissal of federal Internet suicide case sought
Court Alerts
An attorney for a Missouri woman charged in a MySpace hoax that allegedly led a 13-year-old girl to commit suicide filed motions Wednesday to dismiss the federal case.
Three motions were filed in U.S. District Court on behalf of Lori Drew of the St. Louis suburb of O'Fallon, her attorney H. Dean Steward told The Associated Press.
Drew is accused of helping create a false-identity account on the MySpace social networking site to convince young neighbor Megan Meier she was chatting with a teenage boy.
Meier, who was being treated for attention deficit disorder and depression, hanged herself in 2006, allegedly after receiving cruel messages, including one saying the world would be better off without her.
Missouri authorities did not file any charges because at the time they could not find any laws that applied.
In May, however, a Los Angeles federal grand jury indicted Drew on charges of conspiracy and accessing computers without authorization to get information used to inflict emotional distress. She pleaded not guilty.
The case was filed in Los Angeles because MySpace's servers are in Los Angeles County. FBI agents in St. Louis and Los Angeles investigated the case.
Legal experts have said use of the federal cyber-crime statute on accessing computers may be open to challenge.
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Grounds for Divorce in Ohio - Sylkatis Law, LLC
A divorce in Ohio is filed when there is typically “fault” by one of the parties and party not at “fault” seeks to end the marriage. A court in Ohio may grant a divorce for the following reasons:
• Willful absence of the adverse party for one year
• Adultery
• Extreme cruelty
• Fraudulent contract
• Any gross neglect of duty
• Habitual drunkenness
• Imprisonment in a correctional institution at the time of filing the complaint
• Procurement of a divorce outside this state by the other party
Additionally, there are two “no-fault” basis for which a court may grant a divorce:
• When the parties have, without interruption for one year, lived separate and apart without cohabitation
• Incompatibility, unless denied by either party
However, whether or not the the court grants the divorce for “fault” or not, in Ohio the party not at “fault” will not get a bigger slice of the marital property.