Bad cases = Bad laws

By now everyone has heard the story about Megan Meier, the 13 year old Dardenne Prairie girl who hanged herself last year. The mother of one of Megan's friends set up a fake MySpace persona as 16 year old Josh Evans, a cute teenage boy who started an online friendship with Megan. Several people had access to the account for fake Josh and at some point one or more of the posters decided to have Josh turn on Megan. While we don't know everything that was posted or who posted it there can be no doubt that the actions of the mother were stupid, inconsiderate, immature and just plain mean. However, is it criminal?

St. Charles County Prosecutor Jack Banas is investigating the matter and is supposed to announce later today whether criminal charges will be brought. However, just in case there is no criminal law that covers this situation the politicians or falling all over each other in a rush to pass laws to cover any future cases of Internet harassment. Leading the way was Megan's hometown, Dardenne Prairie, followed quickly by Florissant, MO. With the world wide public outcry over Megan's death we can expect new laws to be enacted across the globe and if Dardenne Prairie's ordinance is any indication, these laws will be poorly thought out, poorly drafted, vague, overly broad and probably unconstitutional and unenforceable.

First, it should be noted that a city in Missouri is very limited in what it can do in regard to criminal laws. The state and federal governments can pass laws that make an action a misdemeanor or a felony but the most a city can do is enact an ordinance violation. A look at Dardenne Prairie's ordinance indicates several problems:

• The law defines "harass" and that definition requires an action to be a "course of conduct" which is also defined. However, when you get to what constitutes Cyber-Harassment the section goes well beyond harass to include alarm, annoy, abuse, threaten, intimidate or embarrass. The only word which is defined is harass and, even more troubling, harass is the only word that requires a course of conduct. Thus, under this law, one email which may annoy or embarrass someone could be considered Cyber-Harassment. So if you are planning a surprise 50th birthday party for a friend make sure you don't send one of those old embarrassing pictures of your friend with his beer hat and big bells because in Dardenne Prairie it just might be a crime.
• The definition of "harass" requires that the conduct would cause a reasonable person to suffer substantial emotional distress or that the conduct would cause a reasonable person to suffer substantial emotional distress. Again, however, the rest of the terms used in the ordinance (alarm, annoy, embarrass etc) do not contain any such limitation.
• The definition of "harass" also includes a provision which states that if a person over the age of 18 has contact with a person under the age of 18 the standard is whether a reasonable parent would fear for the well being of their minor child. Of course, traditionally harassment laws deal with unwanted contact. This provision would apply even if the recipient, for example a 17 year old girl communicating with her 18 year old boyfriend, was a voluntary participant and possibly the instigator of the communications.

Obviously, this law was drafted because of the outrage that many have towards the mother who created the fake account. However, from what I read all we know is that she created the fake Josh Evans but we don't know if she sent any of the offending messages. Therefore, this law may not even apply to the her.

However, if Josh Evans was real and was trying to end an online relationship the law may apply. If the breakup is ugly and both sides say things to hurt each other, both parties would be in violation of this law. Do we really want to criminalize bad break ups? If so why should we limit it to bad break ups over the Internet?

The Megan Meier case has stirred up a lot of emotions and with that a need to do something. However, as often is the case, bad cases like this often lead to bad laws.