Last Wednesday, the Jury in the case of Megan Meier - the 13-year-old who committed suicide in 2007 after the defendant Lori Drew, her daughter,and another teenage girl first befriended Megan and then bullied her under a fake MySpace profile - came to a verdict. The jury convicted Lori Drew of three misdemeanor computer crimes for her part in setting up the MySpace hoax, but were unable to agree on the fourth count of conspiracy.
This was the first time that a federal statute, that was designed to fight computer crimes was used to prosecute violations of a user agreement on a social networking site. According to the Associated Press, a majority of the jurors wanted a felony conviction for Drew, but four jurors rejected that Lori Drew had conspired to harm Megan Meier, believing that she had created the false account only to obtain information about rumors on her own daughter.
Drew could face up to a year in prison and a $100,000 fine for her convictions on three misdemeanor counts of accessing computers without authorization.
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