CAPE GIRARDEAU SEES FIRST INTERNET CRIME CHARGES

Offensive, threatening language in e-mail has become the grounds for Cape Girardeau County's first Internet crime charges, the county prosecutor said.

In separate incidents, a 14-year-old Cape Girardeau boy and a 26-year-old Jackson man have been cited for harassment, a misdemeanor.

"Up until this point, we have not filed an e-mail harassment charge," said Morley Swingle, prosecutor.

Terry Gibbs, of 1402 Belair St. in Jackson, was issued a criminal summons for sending what was considered a vulgar e-mail message to a man who lives in this area.

The victim told a Cape Girardeau County Sheriff's Deputy that on Aug. 10, Gibbs had sent him a message using various obscenities to describe the receiver. Gibbs also made a threat to beat the victim.

The victim said he felt Gibbs was attempting to encourage a confrontation, since the victim's former wife lives with Gibbs and has an exparte order against the victim, Deputy Nancy Davis said in a probable cause affidavit.

Cape Girardeau police said a 14-year-old boy was cited into juvenile court for harassing e-mail messages sent to about 24 people around Southeast Missouri.

Two batches of messages were sent to groups of 12 and 28 on June 7 and July 22, respectively, detective Trevor Pulley said.

In the messages, the boy threatened to physically harm the receivers if they did not remove him from their mailing lists, police said.

The threats even went as far as saying he would kill the recipients of his messages, Pulley said.

The nature of the messages, which all went to people in Southeast Missouri whom the boy knew personally, were far more violent and coarse than others Pulley has investigated, he said.

"It's not like you can charge someone for saying bad things about you," Pulley said. "I've worked enough of these cases, and none of them have had language that was coarse enough until this."

The messages were sent from locations in Orlando, Fla., and Jackson, Mo. Pulley was able to confirm that the boy was at the residences where the computers were that had been used to send the threatening e-mail messages by getting subpoenas.

Messages sent to the 14-year-old by others were not advertisements or forms of solicitations, Pulley said. They were messages forwarded from someone else, and they did not contain language that would be offensive, according to Missouri's statute on harassment.

The statute defines harassment as frightening another person with a written or telephoned threat to commit what would be a felony, or using the same means to communicate "coarse language offensive to one of average sensibility."

"I think it's important to point out that people are not immune from prosecution for criminal behavior that occurs using a personal computer on the Internet," said Rick Hetzel, police chief.

Swingle expects charges for Internet crimes to significantly grow over time.

"People seek all sorts of means to harass each other," he said.

So far this year, the prosecutor has filed 23 harassment charges. All of them involved harassment by telephone or letter, Swingle said.

As e-mail harassment increases, more use of expert witnesses will occur, he said. It becomes harder to pinpoint a suspect when computers, rather than telephones or face-to-face contact, are used for harassment, Swingle said.

It would also be possible to use a charge of stalking against someone sending threatening e-mail messages, Swingle said. In such a case, a pattern of regular conduct and substantial emotional distress would have to be evident, he said.