By Noelle Phelan
In the summer of 2012, a 16-year-old girl attending a party became so inebriated that she fell unconscious. In the following hours, four local football players attending the party proceeded to strip the girl and carry her nude body around to multiple other locations while they sexually assaulted her. During this time, both the assailants, and numerous other party attendees at the various location filmed the attack and posted it to multiple social media sites, accompanied by cruel and humiliating comments.
Two of the football players in question were indicted after the evidence was spread all over the internet, despite their attempts to cover up the attack. Both of the players were charged and convicted in juvenile court with rape of a minor. The judge found that both males had digitally penetrated the victim, which is defined as rape under Ohio law and held that the girl’s incapacitated state made it impossible for her to have given consent.
The pictures and videos of the attack, along with incriminating texts, were ultimately used at the trial of the two players, Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmond. Some of the text messages which were admitted as evidence at trial implicated several coaches and school officials and indicated that they knew about the assault and tried to cover it up. A grand jury was convened in response to these accusations to determine whether the coaches and school officials should be indicted for not reporting the rape, because under Ohio law they are considered mandated reporters.
The internet hacking group “Anonymous” played an important role in bringing about this grand jury by hacking into the various party attendee’s social media accounts and computers, and posting some of the evidence to public forums, including a twelve-minute-long video of the group of assailants making jokes about what had happened while the victim lay naked and unconscious. One hacker in particular, known as KYAnonymous was especially involved, and demanded apologies from the coaches and school officials, claiming that they had attempted to cover up the attack to protect the school’s football program. He also claimed that there were more people who should have been indicted and convicted of the rape, and threatened to expose them.
KYAnonymous, whose real name is Deric Lostutter, had formed a section of Anonymous that he termed “Justice Ops” which he used in an attempt to bring to justice those who managed to avoid the consequences of their actions, such as the Steubenville rapists. While the grand jury was still in the process of determining whether or not to indict other people in conjunction with the crime, the FBI conducted a raid on the home of Lostutter and arrested him. Three years after that raid, Lostutter is currently facing four felony counts for hacking a booster club website affiliated with the Steubenville football team, even though there is no evidence he had anything to do with it and another hacker has in fact taken responsibility for the hack.
Lostutter is now facing a sentence of twenty-five years for violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). He has pled not guilty to the charges, and maintains that he did not hack into any site. Lostutter’s attorney has indicated that he does not understand why the FBI is choosing to prosecute Lostutter when all he did was a virtual act of political protest to help expose the rape of a minor and the cover-up that the town in which the incident occurred tried to bring about.
The CFAA was theoretically only supposed to apply where there was a “compelling federal interest”, for example, where federal government computers or certain federal institutions were hacked. However, the CFAA has been expanded to include any crime which is interstate. Due to the internet and the current state of technology, basically every computer hacking crime which occurs is considered an interstate crime. Many feel that the act needs to be updated and modernized to fit with the current state of technology.
The act has also been criticized in recent years for imposing far too strict punishments for minor violations and not taking into consideration the nature of the violation. “Hacktivism” is one example where the nature of the violation should be taken into consideration. Specifically looking at the act in question, Lostutter did not harm anyone and actually brought about a positive outcome. This has been a common argument in recent years, especially in light of the Aaron Swartz case, in which an MIT college student committed suicide after being charged with eleven violations of the CFAA for illegally downloading JSTOR articles from the MIT network. Swartz faced up to thirty-five years in prison and a penalty of up to $1 million in fines. The nature of the crime was not looked at when setting the sentencing, and many feel that the “crime” in question was not one which warranted such a harsh punishment, similar to Lostutter.
The judge ordered a minimum sentence of one year for Ma’lik Richmond, and two years for Trent Mays. Mays received an additional year on his sentence because he was also convicted of dissemination of child pornography. In addition, the judge also convicted the superintendent of schools, an elementary school principal and two coaches in the district on misdemeanor charges of failure to report child abuse, tampering with evidence and making false statements. Lostutter was proved correct in his belief that there were school officials who were involved in covering up and attempting to minimize the assault, but he is still being persecuted for his actions in bringing justice to Steubenville and is facing charges more than twenty times as severe as those served by individuals who sexually assaulted a minor.
Student Bio: Noelle is a staff member on the Journal of High Technology Law. She is currently a 2L at Suffolk Law. She possesses a B.A. in English and Sociology and a Criminal Justice certificate from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog are the views of the author alone and do not represent the views of JHTL or Suffolk University Law School.
