Legal News

Lori Drew Moves to Dismiss Indictment in MySpace Suicide Case

By Dan Slater

Lori Drew appears in Los Angeles federal court, June 16, 2008. (AP Photo/Bill Robles)

For those keeping score in the MySpace suicide case, defendant Lori Drew’s attorney, H. Dean Steward, filed his motions to dismiss the indictment today in California federal court.

Here are the three motions to dismiss for: failure to state an offense, vagueness and unconstitutional delegation of prosecutorial power.

Steward — who’s also repping Orange County Sheriff Michael Carona, who last year was charged with conspiracy, mail fraud and witness tampering — recently told the Law Blog that, in the Drew case, the most important defense is a constitutional challenge for “vagueness” — i.e. an argument that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act doesn’t give the defendant adequate notice to prepare to defend against the indictment.

H. Dean Steward. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian)

“It has to do with the definitions of ‘access’ or ‘protected computer’ or ‘unauthorized,’” said Steward. “They’re not defined in the statute, and no other federal statue defines them.”

Indeed, in the motion to dismiss for vagueness, he writes:

If the government’s statutory construction is wrong, the statute did not reach Lori Drew’s conduct and the indictment must be dismissed because the crime has not been committed. If the government’s statutory construction is correct and the statute criminalizes violating a website [terms of service], then the statute is void for vagueness because it fails to provide warning of what is prohibited and ensures discriminatory enforcement under City of Chicago v. Morales [a Supreme Court case from 1999]

Interestingly, attached to the motion to dismiss for failure to state an offense is a redacted version of an interview that the FBI did with Ashley Grills, the young woman whom Lori Drew has called the mastermind of the fictional “Josh Evans” MySpace account. In an interview with ABC, Grills admitted to creating the “Josh Evans” account, but said Drew encouraged and participated in the hoax.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on July 23, 2008 (boomark / email).