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Jury to deliberate in MySpace suicide case
The jury will begin deliberating on Tuesday in the case against a Missouri woman accused of tormenting on Myspace a teenager who later committed suicide.
- Agencies
- Published: 08:39 November 25, 2008
Los Angeles: The jury will begin deliberating on Tuesday in the case against a Missouri woman accused of tormenting on Myspace a teenager who later committed suicide.
Prosecutors told jurors that 49-year-old Lori Drew posed as a teenage boy on the social networking website to tease and humiliate 13-year-old Megan Meier.
They said Drew was upset that Meier had called her daughter names and had come up with the plan to get back at the teenager.
"The tragedy in this case is not just Megan Meier's suicide," US Attorney Thomas O'Brien said in his closing arguments to jurors.
"It's the fact that it was so preventable…She (Drew) could have gone over and talked to her mom and we wouldn't be here," he said.
Drew's attorney, H. Dean Steward, also described Meier's death as a tragedy, but he reminded jurors that Drew is not accused of homicide in Meier's death.
"Please do not add to this tragedy," he said. "This has been such a woeful, woeful case and there's been so many tears here."
Drew is charged with conspiracy and accessing protected computers without authorisation to obtain information for the purpose of inflicting emotional distress on Meier.
She faces a maximum of 20 years in federal prison if she is convicted on all of the charges.
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