A verdict seems near in the unusual “cyber-bullying” trial playing out in Los Angelles. Jurors said yesterday they had resolved three counts, and were ordered by U.S. District Judge George Wu to resume deliberating today on the fourth, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. Lori Drew, 49, of O’Fallon, Mo., faces four felony charges involving illegally accessing MySpace’s protected computers.
Prosecutors said Drew and two others created a fake account on MySpace, pretending to be an attractive 16-year-old boy named Josh Evans. They planned to find out what Megan Meier, a 13-year-old neighbor of the Drews, had been saying about Drew’s daughter. Prosecutors said the trio decided to use Megan’s conversations to humiliate her. On Oct. 16, 2006, the online conversations turned into a name-calling brawl. Megan was left in tears and hanged herself shortly after receiving this message: “The world would be a better place without you.”
Link: http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stcharles/story/2185DC6DF00A5EF28625750D0006A321?O