Prosecution: Dead Girl’s Parents Must Be Heard at Cyberbullying Sentencing

Source: WIRED

Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles are urging a U.S. district judge to allow the parents of a deceased girl to speak at the sentencing hearing of Lori Drew on Monday.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Krause, in writing to the court (.pdf), argued that Drew’s crime led directly to the death of 13-year-old Megan Meier in Missouri in 2006. Therefore her parents, Ron and Tina Meier, were unquestionably victims of her crime.

Krause argued that under the Crime Victim’s Rights Act, a victim was defined as “a person directly and proximately harmed as the result of the commission of a Federal offense. . . .”

Therefore, he said, “depriving the Meier family of their right of allocution would be an error.”

Prosecutors were responding to a request Drew’s defense attorney made last week, asking the court to not allow family or friends of the dead teen to speak at the sentencing hearing. Defense attorney H. Dean Steward told the court that Meier’s family and friends were not victims, since Drew was not convicted of causing Meier’s death, merely of unauthorized access to a computer.


Read more: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/05/prosecution-parents-should-be-allowed-to-speak-at-cyberbullying-hearing/