A federal judge in Los Angeles on Thursday tentatively threw out the conviction of a Missouri woman for her role in a cruel Internet hoax on a teenage girl who ended up committing suicide.
The decision by U.S. District Judge George H. Wu, which will not become final until he files a written ruling, was a blow to prosecutors who had hoped to send the message that cyber-bullying is a crime. Wu had repeatedly delayed sentencing to consider a defense motion to dismiss the entire case.
U.S. Atty. Thomas P. O'Brien, whose office prosecuted the woman, said after the decision was announced that the law needed to be strengthened.
"We call it cyber-bullying and we don't have a law to address it," he said at a news conference.
O'Brien, who was personally involved in the case, has earned a reputation for aggressive prosecutions in the nearly two years he has headed the Central District of California.
His decision to prosecute Lori Drew, 50, surprised many because the suicide and MySpace hoax that led up to it took place in Missouri, where local and federal prosecutors had decided they could find no applicable statute.
O'Brien said his office determined that the case could be prosecuted in Los Angeles because MySpace is based in Beverly Hills.
Prosecutors here invoked a criminal statute more commonly used to prosecute hackers or defendants who have improperly accessed computers for financial gain, to charge Drew for her part in setting up a MySpace account in the name of a fictitious 16-year-old boy.
Prosecutors said Drew, her 13-year-old daughter, Sarah, and an 18-year old employee used the fake profile to lure Megan Meier into an online relationship, initially to find out whether Megan had been spreading rumors about Sarah.
Megan, 13, hanged herself with a belt in October 2006 after getting a message, purportedly from the boy, telling her that "the world would be a better place without you."
A federal jury convicted Drew in November of three misdemeanor computer crimes but deadlocked on a felony conspiracy charge that would have carried a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.
Wu took the unusual step of delaying sentencing to consider the defense's contention that the case should be dismissed because prosecutors failed to prove that Drew, whose family lived four doors away from the Meiers in the St. Louis suburb of Dardenne Prairie, had intentionally violated MySpace rules when creating the bogus profile.
