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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