Slate.com senior writer Emily Bazelon writes — in an article titled “Lori Drew is a Meanie: The problem with prosecuting cyber-bullying” — that Lori Drew’s conviction was wrong and won’t stand up on appeal. In her jurisprudence blog, Bazelon concludes:

“… wild and woolly though it may be, the Internet doesn’t really call for rethinking our affection for the First Amendment. Cyber-bullying is scary. For some kids, MySpace isn’t a safe place. But criminal convictions aren’t the best way to clean up the neighborhood.”

Bazelon’s take on the validity of the conviction:

“As a matter of law, the verdict against Lori Drew in the MySpace suicide case is fairly indefensible. A U.S. attorney in Los Angeles went after a misdeed in Missouri - when state and federal prosecutors there didn’t think Drew’s actions constituted a crime - with a crazy-broad reading of a statute written to punish computer hacking. Just about every single law professor and editorial writer to weigh in has condemned the prosecutorial overreaching.”

Later, she writes:

But the jury “did buy the idea that Drew ‘intentionally’ broke the law, even though all that seems to mean is that she clicked “I agree” in response to a long series of legalistic paragraphs that just about nobody really reads. It’s hard to imagine even these misdemeanor convictions standing up on appeal.”

….. “As Andrew Grossman argues for the Heritage Foundation, laws that make it seem as if “everyone is a criminal” are generally a bad idea. Most of the time, they’re unenforceable, and then every once in a while, they’re used to scapegoat someone like Lori Drew.”