Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) -- The trial of a Missouri woman who's accused of creating a phony profile on News Corp.'s MySpace social-networking Web site that led a teenage girl to kill herself may not include evidence of the suicide.

U.S. District Judge George Wu, at a hearing today in Los Angeles, indicated that allowing jurors to hear about the suicide would be too prejudicial, according to H. Dean Steward, a lawyer for Lori Drew, who had asked for the evidence to be excluded. Wu asked the government to file additional arguments and will make a decision at a Nov. 14 hearing, Steward said.

``Without the suicide, they don't have a case,'' Steward said in a telephone interview.

Federal prosecutors accuse Drew and other unidentified co- conspirators of registering on MySpace as a fictitious 16-year- old boy named Josh Evans who, in September 2006, made contact with 13-year-old Megan Meier and flirted with her for four weeks. Evans then broke off the relationship, telling Meier ``the world would be a better place'' without her in it, according to the indictment. Meier hanged herself within an hour, prosecutors said.

Drew is charged with unauthorized access of computers to obtain information, a violation of the U.S. Computer Fraud and Abuse Act that is unrelated to the suicide, Steward said in his request to exclude the evidence. Prosecutors claim the death of the girl is relevant because Drew's motive for committing computer fraud, they say, was to inflict emotional distress.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Krause, the lead prosecutor on the case, declined to comment. Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for U.S. Attorney Thomas O'Brien, didn't immediately return a call to his office.

The trial is scheduled to start Nov. 18.

The case is U.S. v. Lori Drew, U.S. District Court, Central District of California (Los Angeles.)

To contact the reporter on this story: Edvard Pettersson in Los Angeles at epettersson@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 10, 2008 16:23 EST