Alleged MySpace Hoaxer on Trial Today
Case Is One of the First to Use Computer Hacking Law to Prosecute Cyberbullying
A conviction "will really strengthen the Department of Justice's hand to go after all sorts of conduct they don't go after today. It could open doors to all sorts of prosecutions that we wouldn't imagine today," said Ohm, who signed a friend of the court brief asking for the case to be dismissed.
According to prosecutors, for several years, the Meiers and the Drews were friendly. Both families had girls the same age who attended school together and had gone on family trips together.
Megan's mother, Tina Meier, reportedly told Drew that Megan was suffering from depression, that she was "vulnerable" and that she worried her daughter might try to hurt herself.
But the relationship between the girls was "at times, rocky," prosecutors say. The pair drifted apart and, in 2006, Drew suspected that Megan was spreading rumors about her daughter. Prosecutors say Drew, her daughter and her 18-year-old assistant, Ashley Grills, set up a fake MySpace account in the name of Josh Evans, an attractive 16-year-old boy who was new in town, to spy on Megan.
They allegedly used the Josh Evans account to contact and befriend Megan. Within a few days, prosecutors allege, Drew encouraged her daughter and Grills to flirt with Megan and planned to lure the teenager to the mall to confront her with the hoax and taunt her, prosecutors say.
In October 2006, another neighborhood girl obtained the password to the Josh account and sent Megan a message saying that Josh no longer wanted to be her friend. The next day, the argument escalated until Grills, posing as Josh, told Megan the world would be a better place without her in it.
About 20 minutes later, Tina Meier found her daughter hanging from her belt in her bedroom closet. She died at the hospital the next day.
Grills said during an interview with "Good Morning America" she wrote that final message in an effort to end the online relationship with Josh because she felt the joke had gone too far.
Drew has previously denied involvement in the hoax, saying she didn't know about the mean messages being sent to Megan, and her attorney Dean Steward told The Associated Press that part of Drew's defense would be that she was not at home when the final message was sent.
Her daughter, whose name is being withheld because of privacy concerns, and Grills have not been charged
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