Decius wrote:

A former federal prosecutor has decided to take on his ex-employer in defending a woman against charges that she violated federal laws in allegedly creating a MySpace account used to bully a teenage girl who committed suicide.

Orin Kerr, professor of law at George Washington University Law School, was a criminal trial attorney in the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section at the Department of Justice as well as a special assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Kerr wrote on the Volokh Conspiracy blog that the government was essentially charging Drew with criminal trespassing on MySpace's server for allegedly providing false information to open a MySpace account under the false identity of a nonexistent teenage boy. Kerr said this essentially made it a federal crime to violate any online terms of service contract.

1. I'm sympathetic to Kerr's perspective on this... it would be better for everyone if TOS violations did not create criminal liability.

2. I think the DOJ is only prosecuting this because the mob demands it and I think they pulled this strategy out of a hat because its plausible enough to litigate but they intend to loose. If they intended to win they would have chosen something less radical to charge this woman with. Lets hope they don't accidentally win.

3. I agree with one of the comments in the attached thread... that if an adult man created a MySpace account posing as a teenage boy and made false romatic advances toward a teenage girl, and that girl committed suicide, that man would be prosecuted under some sort of sex crimes/child predation statute such as attempted child molestation with huge prison sentences and permanent sex offender registry associated with it. The fact that the exact same crime is treated in a completely different way because the perpetrator is a woman speaks to the absurdity of our political response to these issues on the whole.

4. I think people care about this case because the media has drawn attention to it, and I think the only reason the media cares is because it has something to do with the Internet, and plays on fears that parents have about what their children are doing on the Internet. Bullies drive people to suicide every day in the United States. Literally several times a day. This case is not exceptional.

5. Are bullies legally culpable if they drive someone to suicide? I'm not sure how I feel about that question as a policy matter, but my understanding is that as a legal matter in general they are not. I don't see why the internet should change that. The internet has absolutely nothing to do with it. The same rules ought to apply whether this woman sent emails to her victim or she sent letters through the mail.

6. If we think bullies ought to be culpable when their victims commit suicide, than we need new state laws across the board. That means letti... [ Read More (0.1k in body) ]

Mike the Usurper wrote:
Considering the participants in this case live a few blocks over, I'll give you an entirely different take.

The county prosecutor should have handled this the same way they would have had this happened in a local park. This would fall under some variety of child endangerment. It wasn't done that way because it happened on the internet and oooohhhh... that's a big place.

Bullshit. She knew exactly what she was doing, and tried to fuck with the neighbor kid's head because her kid wasn't popular enough. Well she succeeded and the neighbor kid is dead. This isn't ex-post facto, this is an adult knowing damn well what she was doing, and there are laws on the books that cover it, they just don't say "internet" because the laws were written decades ago.

This is important. If you're elected, in theory, you could work on legislation related to this.

What laws are on the books that would have covered this if they were meeting in a park? Why does the use of the internet make them inapplicable to this situation?

If we had a good understanding of exactly what she should have been charged with and why she can't be charged with it, than we know exactly what ought to be done.

Decius wrote:

Mike the Usurper wrote:
Considering the participants in this case live a few blocks over, I'll give you an entirely different take.

The county prosecutor should have handled this the same way they would have had this happened in a local park. This would fall under some variety of child endangerment. It wasn't done that way because it happened on the internet and oooohhhh... that's a big place.

Bullshit. She knew exactly what she was doing, and tried to fuck with the neighbor kid's head because her kid wasn't popular enough. Well she succeeded and the neighbor kid is dead. This isn't ex-post facto, this is an adult knowing damn well what she was doing, and there are laws on the books that cover it, they just don't say "internet" because the laws were written decades ago.

This is important. If you're elected, in theory, you could work on legislation related to this.

What laws are on the books that would have covered this if they were meeting in a park? Why does the use of the internet make them inapplicable to this situation?

If we had a good understanding of exactly what she should have been charged with and why she can't be charged with it, than we know exactly what ought to be done.

I would have expected a filing under Missouri 568.050 "(1) He or she with criminal negligence acts in a manner that creates a substantial risk to the life, body or health of a child less than seventeen years old;" or under Missouri 568.045 "(1) The person knowingly acts in a manner that creates a substantial risk to the life, body, or health of a child less than seventeen years old;" So long as the incident occurs within the jurisdiction then it applies. I would have argued this the same way they handle such incidents when they occur by phone, that the actual routing doesn't make any difference.

The reason the internet makes a difference is because the "exchanges" happened via the California servers, and therefore the incident was in California, not here. That is why is was not pressed here, and is a pile of crap. If the same happened via phone and the switchboard is in St Louis, it becomes a St Louis incident? No. The fact that it happened over the internet means the crime is wherever the servers are? Again, no.

Having been over every report on this I could find, this was a case where the person charged knew what she was doing (she didn't have this as an intended result, but that's a different question) and was deliberately trying to mess with the neighbor's child. The difference between the case we're talking about and that of the alleged Texas-Cheerleader Murdering Mom was a matter of intent and use of the internet. She didn't mean for her to kill herself and given some of the information that has come out that's a MAYBE.

In the meantime, the state stalking law, Missouri 565.225 was updated so that it clearly would apply to future cases.

In any case, I think an adult telling a 13 year old, that they have spent weeks manipulating, the world would be a better place is she weren't in it, fits easily under the prior endangerment statute.

Mike the Usurper wrote:
The reason the internet makes a difference is because the "exchanges" happened via the California servers, and therefore the incident was in California, not here. That is why is was not pressed here, and is a pile of crap. If the same happened via phone and the switchboard is in St Louis, it becomes a St Louis incident? No. The fact that it happened over the internet means the crime is wherever the servers are? Again, no.

In my view, the jurisdictional issues are easy as both parties are in Missouri. I don't think the fact that servers in California were involved should make it an interstate problem. The same thing could happen interstate over the internet, so there is an inescapable federal policy problem here, but in most cases this sort of thing is going to happen locally and local authorities ought to be empowered to handle it.

Did the local prosecutors fail to press charges because they thought that they would fail on a jurisdictional challenge, or did they press and get rebuked by the court system? Is there a specific precedent in play? Was it a federal or local court that made the determination?

If it was a federal court, there is nothing that you can do, but there might be a case of a federal law that clarifies that what happens between people in Missouri stays in Missouri.

If it was a state court than perhaps a state law would do.

If they failed to prosecute with no legal rationalization than maybe the problem is with the Mayor?

Decius wrote:

Mike the Usurper wrote:
The reason the internet makes a difference is because the "exchanges" happened via the California servers, and therefore the incident was in California, not here. That is why is was not pressed here, and is a pile of crap. If the same happened via phone and the switchboard is in St Louis, it becomes a St Louis incident? No. The fact that it happened over the internet means the crime is wherever the servers are? Again, no.

In my view, the jurisdictional issues are easy as both parties are in Missouri. I don't think the fact that servers in California were involved should make it an interstate problem. The same thing could happen interstate over the internet, so there is an inescapable federal policy problem here, but in most cases this sort of thing is going to happen locally and local authorities ought to be empowered to handle it.

Did the local prosecutors fail to press charges because they thought that they would fail on a jurisdictional challenge, or did they press and get rebuked by the court system? Is there a specific precedent in play? Was it a federal or local court that made the determination?

If it was a federal court, there is nothing that you can do, but there might be a case of a federal law that clarifies that what happens between people in Missouri stays in Missouri.

If it was a state court than perhaps a state law would do.

If they failed to prosecute with no legal rationalization than maybe the problem is with the Mayor?

The state never filed anything. It was toss the hands up in the air and say, "well hell, we don't know what to do" and then put the hands down and sit on them. From what was released at the local office, their comments were (paraphrased) "well this is horrible, but it's not a crime."

Frankly, I could not be more appalled at the response from Jack Banas' office (he's the county prosecutor).

As a second point, this is exactly why I despise "originalist" and "strict constructionist" judges. When Madison wrote the Constitution, we didn't have telephones, cars, radio, the internet or most of the countries currently on the planet. What they did was write in broad strokes that are open to some interpretation, but not so broad as to go all over creation with it. It is meant to be interpreted. There are any number of instances where a law was written for a specific point and applied in a different manner as things changed. Those bozos (and calling them that is really an insult to clowns everywhere), and the local prosecutor, don't have the mental muscle to see the route, or the flexibility to achieve it, and so they don't even try.

This is why you don't want mental deficients in decision making positions. Harrison Bergeron lives.