Comments on: Judge reluctant to dismiss MySpace suicide case

By: September 29 roundup

September 29 roundup — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 13:08:47 +0000

[…] Prosecution of Lori Drew (MySpace imposture followed by victim’s suicide) a “case study in overcriminalization” [Andrew Grossman, Heritage; earlier] […]

By: tcaptain

tcaptain — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 17:39:06 +0000

Isn’t there some sort of law against this sort of emotional manipulation…or to that extreme I mean?

Wouldn’t this fall under some sort of criminal negligence statute?

I agree that trying to stretch existing law is stupid. I simply don’t know law all that well and I’m curious about this.

What she did IS very reprehensible, and if it breaks no law, than she SHOULD walk free…as much as it galls me.

By: Bill Poser

Bill Poser — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 03:52:49 +0000

Agreed. What is odd here is that the judge is reluctant to dismiss the case. One of the reasons we have judges is to dismiss such cases before a jury can get its hands on them.

By: AZFlyer

AZFlyer — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 01:45:57 +0000

This is obviously a case of a prosecutor trying to stretch the law to get a popular conviction. It’s one of those cases where someone did something that most consider wrong, yet the state of Missouri (correctly) did not prosecute because there was no law aimed specifically at the act in question.

Setting a precedent that violating a website’s TOS is equivalent to violating federal hacking laws seems absurd, yet the argument might succeed, just because so many are adamant on punishing this woman for something.

I’ve twice served on juries where jurors wanted to “convict this guy of something”, because they did not like what a defendant had done. In both cases, the defendant had not actually broken the law that he was being tried for, and in both cases I refused to go along with such a travesty. “Vengance” law is a bad thing when practiced by juries. I find it even more disturbing when it is practiced by prosecutors (who should know better).

By: john

john — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 01:21:00 +0000

I’m not sure why she isn’t being sued for intentional infliction of emotional distress, or whatever the actual wording should be? Is that just a TV thing?