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Lori Drew Cyber-Bullying Trial Begins
An anonymous reader writes "The cyber-bullying trial of Lori Drew opened yesterday. She was indicted for conspiring to access and accessing MySpace illegally in order to 'further a tortious act, namely, intentional infliction of emotional distress' (PDF of the indictment). The BBC has background on the case, the NYTimes covers the opening statements, and Wired has today's testimony."
"tortious", not "torturous".
constituting a tort; wrongful.
Maybe you should make sure you're putting the correct person on trial here.
"The Woman" who actually typed the messages and talked the girl into killing herself is immune from prosecution because she agreed to testify against Lori Drew. Ms. Drew was not the originator of any of the messages from the fictional boy to the girl.
Examining the available facts indicates that this was an activity which Ms. Drew's assistant and daughter engaged in.
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You may not have noticed, but the only involvement ever mentioned in connection with Lori Drew is that she may have been aware the account was created. She did not herself create the account. She did not herself send messages to Megan Meier. She did not tell Meier to kill herself.
From Wired:
That's a little different than saying "she may have been aware the account was created". Also,
I'd be willing to downgrade her from "primary actor" to "willing participant", but I don't think you can say she was only partially involved.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Add the fact that there was no ignorance of the pre-existing condition here. The woman was at one point a friend of the family and knew that this girl had depression and was taking medication to treat it.
You cant charge someone of committing a crime if it wasn't a crime when they committed it.
And while that is sad for them, you cannot punish people for happening to trigger this, especially if it is impossible for them to have determined it.
First, this woman knew about the girl's condition. Second, according to the eggshell skull rule the sole fact that she performed a deliberately harming action which resulted in death (whether intended or not) would be enough to call this murder.
The health professional who allowed the girl's condition to deteriorate so while under his/her care is another story altogether, and is at least most likely guilty of malpractice.
Well, I can't manage to find precise information about the drug the girl was treated with, but fact is, some anti-depressant, specially old one which work on the dopamine & adrenaline pathways (less the more recent which work on the serotonin pathways) have quite some secondary effect.
Normally depression is associated with a strong lack of will and lack of energy, the patient just sits around and doesn't want to do anything (aboulia in latin, sorry don't know the proper english word).
The old antidepressant have a much quicker effect on the the lack of will, than on the sadness and morbid thoughts of depression. This leaves a window during which the patient has already more energy to act, but still has lots of dark/sad ideas. During this period, the patient has a higher risk to enact the dark thoughs and thus the risk of suicide is elevated.
This risks require proper monitoring of the patient and perhaps, if that's the case, the poor girl was left too much unattended.
I don't think it's a real malpractice coming from the doctor (I don't thing the doctor really fucked up somewhere). But on the other hand insisting a little bit more about the dangers when speaking with the parents would perhaps attracted their attention that girl was going to be quite fragile during the first phase of the therapy.
Other things strike as rather odd :
- She wasn't completely isolated socially, according to wikipedia the girl participated in outdoor activities, etc. For someone not living completely isolated to reach a point where enacting suicide is a sign of very deep problems, the things that could be easily triggered by seemingly mundane situation.
- She commited suicide by hanging according to wikipedia. This is a method with a certain success rates. This isn't the typical girl's suicide (most girls statistically are more likely to resort to less "definitive" ways, like sleep pill overdoses). Often the suicide attempts look a lot like a "call to help".
The hanging show quite some determination to kill herself.
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Your post would make sense if she were being charged with murder. However:
IANAL. But the relevant bits here are that the defendant appears to have lied regarding her identity to multiple parties, for the express purpose of inflicting emotional harm on someone. As it turns out, the mere act of her lying is prosecutable, because it led to damages (emotional harm contributing to the victim's suicide).
"She's not guilty of murder" is a straw man - if the DA thought there was a murder charge worth prosecuting there, they likely would have pursued it. This isn't a murder charge.