Neighbor Guilty in MySpace Hoax Case

Lori Drew, who was convicted for her role in an online hoax that prosecutors say led 13-year-old Megan Meier to commit suicide, faces sentencing Monday.

(AP Photo)

'Not Like I Pulled the Trigger'

Prosecutors claimed that after Drew learned what had happened, she told her daughter and Grills to delete the MySpace account and told the girl who said that Josh no longer wanted to be Megan's friend to "keep her mouth shut." At one point, after admitting she had told others to take down the MySpace page, Drew allegedly said, "It's not like I pulled the trigger," said prosecutors.

When Megan's parents learned of Drew's alleged involvement, they contacted the police and the FBI. Local and federal prosecutors in Missouri investigated but never charged Drew, concluding that no crime had been committed, according to court records. Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles, where MySpace's computer servers are located, took the case to a grand jury, which indicted Drew in May.

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Judge George Wu ruled before the trial that prosecutors could present evidence of Megan's suicide. The terms of service bar fraud, harassment or using information from MySpace to "harass, abuse or harm another person."

Some observers said that allowing prosecutors to present the evidence of Megan's suicide raises the possibility that the case, at least in the minds of jurors, will become more about the human drama of a teenage girl's death than about the legal issues involved.

"Once the suicide horse is out of the barn it's hard to tell jurors to ignore that," said Joseph DeMarco, a former federal prosecutor. "In a case like this, where the underlying acts seem to be innocent in and of themselves, the inflammatory word 'suicide' might have disproportionate impact."

Though the prosecution has been criticized, prosecutors said the case would not mean that anyone who violated a Web site's terms of service would face criminal charges because prosecutors must still prove that a person acted with criminal intent.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.