The felony charges required them to find that Drew intentionally accessed MySpace’s computers to commit a tortious act — that is, to intentionally inflict emotional distress on 13-year-old Megan Meier, who subsequently committed suicide. The jurors instead convicted Drew on three counts of a lesser misdemeanor charge for simply accessing MySpace’s computer system to obtain information about and from Megan…
Kunasz said jurors were given printouts of three conversations between Megan and “Josh” as evidence of Drew’s three alleged felony violations. But Kunasz said the final message that Megan received wasn’t among the printouts, and the three that jurors did receive weren’t malicious.
“They were ‘oh you’re so hot’, ‘I love you’, and who-loves-who messages,” she said. “It wasn’t something that to me personally — and I think the rest of the jury felt the same way — was malicious in mind.”
Kunasz said jurors were not allowed to take into account the last message sent to Megan, because the message was not sent through MySpace. Ashley Grills testified that she sent the message through American Online’s instant messaging service.
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