The jury leader in the trial of a Missouri woman accused of an Internet hoax that ended in a teenage neighbour's suicide said most panelists favoured convicting the defendant of felony conspiracy.
But the jurors convicted Lori Drew only on federal misdemeanor charges because they were unable to agree on whether the MySpace hoax was malicious, forewoman Valentina Kunasz told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Monday.
Drew, 49, of the St. Louis suburb of O'Fallon, was convicted on November 26 in US District Court in Los Angeles, where the case was tried because MySpace has servers in the area. Besides the conspiracy charge, jurors also rejected three other felony counts of accessing computers without authorisation to inflict emotional harm.
Kunasz said four holdouts believed Drew had conspired to create a fictitious teenage boy on MySpace to get Megan Meier, 13, to divulge information, not to harm her. Witnesses had testified that the aim of the hoax had been to find out whether Megan was spreading rumours about Drew's daughter, Sarah, who was also 13 at the time.
The "boy" dumped Megan in 2006, telling her: "The world would be a better place without you." Megan hanged herself soon afterward.
The defence said Drew was not present when the message was sent.
"I didn't think she intended to have this girl kill herself," Kunasz said. "But she knew she was suicidal, depressed and taking medicines and still continued to pursue this act. Whether (Drew) physically types those messages we'll never know, but she didn't make any effort to stop it, so, to me, that was malicious."
Kunasz added: "I wish that those four other jurors would have had a different opinion. But they thought what they thought and they were entitled to that."
Kunasz also told NBC's Today show, in a television interview broadcast on Monday, that Drew exercised "poor judgment" because she knew Megan was depressed and had suicidal tendencies.
Megan's mother, Tina Meier, pointed out that Drew is an adult. "She knew what was going on," Meier said on Today. "She allowed this to continue to happen."
She said she was disappointed that Drew was not found guilty of additional charges, "but that's something I can't dwell on."
"I don't know that justice will ever 100 percent be served," she said. "I can never bring Megan back, but my hope is through all of this ... it is about bringing justice."
Drew could face up to a year in prison and a $US100,000 ($NZ190,000) fine for her convictions on three misdemeanor counts of accessing computers without authorisation.
