Remember back to 2006 when a young girl killed herself [1], [4] after being tricked and harassed by a faux boy she found on the Web using MySpace. The trial against the faux boy, an adult woman (Lori Drew), did not result in prosecution for the death of Megan, much to the dismay of many.
Yet, today we read about another trial where someone is being accused of second degree murder because they may have mentioned something slanderous about another person who was later killed by a hit man [2]. In this case, though, the person on trial is a former FBI agent who was working deep cover to infiltrate organized crime.
In both cases, someone released information to third parties that resulted in the death of another person.
Neither defendant in either of these cases actually committed the act of murder, though.
In the case of the FBI agent, though, the murder charge is being taken seriously. Yet, in the MySpace slander case, the murder charge was not taken seriously. How are these two cases dissimilar? If this FBI agent is supposedly responsible for the death of John Callahan, then why isn't that woman responsible for the death of Megan Meier?
Let's look at murder for what it is. According to wikipedia, murder is:
"... the unlawful killing of another human person with intent or malice aforethought ..." [3]
So what does it mean to "kill" someone. Well, that goes back to the malice aforethought of murder. One of the accepted criteria for malice aforethought is:
"... (iii) Reckless indifference to an unjustifiably high risk to human life (sometimes described as an "abandoned and malignant heart")" [3]
So let's consider this for the woman who demonstrated reckless indifference to a sensitive, clinically depressed, teenage girl. By slandering Megan in a public forum, the woman clearly was indifferent to Megan's social well being. By pretending to be a boy who was socially and romantically interested in Megan, she clearly demonstrated a recklessness with Megan's mental state. Yet, a jury of supposedly informed adults decided that this was not murder [5].
In the case of the FBI agent, he clearly knew that Callahan was in dire threat of harm when he made statements that lead to Callahan's death. Yet, did he make the remarks recklessly? We don't know all of the details in that case, so it's hard to say whether or not Agent Connolly was negligent in his protection of Callahan's well being. That protection was something he swore to uphold as an Agent of US Federal Law.