Jury retires in Drew suicide case

The jury has retired in the Lori Drew trial

Arguments in the trial of Lori Drew have ended and the jury is now considering its verdict.

Drew, 49, is accused of setting up a false MySpace account and befriending, and then taunting, a friend of her daughter. The girl, Megan Meier, committed suicide shortly afterwards.

The case has caused concern among some for the way that both sides of the case have behaved.

The prosecution brought its case in Los Angeles, despite the fact that both families lived side by side in Missouri. Because there are no laws against false identification and cyber-bullying in that state, prosecutors brought the trial to Los Angeles because that is where MySpace's servers are situated.

If the court accepts the argument that this is legitimate then the process of taking legal action against companies that have offshored their server and storage operations could become more complex.

Meanwhile, the defence has argued that Drew should be found not guilty as her only crime was to break the terms and conditions of MySpace by setting up a false identity.

"If you hadn't heard the indictment read to you, you'd think this was a homicide case," said defence attorney Dean Steward. "And it's not a homicide case. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a computer case, and that's what you need to decide."

Steward said of the seven-page MySpace agreement: "Nobody reads these things, nobody. How can you violate something when you haven't even read it? End of case. The case is over."

If this argument is successful the legal frameworks of terms and conditions will suffer a blow, and the argument could be used in a variety of cases, from hacking to modifying commercial software.