WAINWRIGHT'S TRIAL POSTPONED UNTIL NEXT YEAR...

...at the request of his lawyer. Here's what I wrote about it today on the Hattiesburg American forum.

Here's what the HA said about YW on 11-10-07:

"Wainwright was arrested in April, just days following the shootings at Virginia Tech, for allegedly posting threats on the popular social networking Web site MySpace.com.

Since his arrest, Wainwright has been held in the Lamar County Jail on a $1 million bond.

Wainwright was indicted on charges of cyber-stalking through electronic media in September. He pleaded innocent following his arrest.

Very little information has been released regarding exactly what kinds of threats Wainwright posted on his blog."

So he posted threats on his MySpace page? On his MySpace blog? Are they trying to get him on the Jessica Simpson stuff?

Where have these posts gone? Other articles have Bob Hopkins saying that it was YW's MySpace "correspondence"--MySpace emails?--that was the problem.

"His own correspondence on his MySpace page gave the indication that he was unhappy with his education, that he was a direct threat if he would have carried out an incident to either an individual or a group of individuals," says Chief Bob Hopkins of the university police.

From the same link:

"Hopkins says the suspect's MySpace page discussed the April 20, 1999, massacre at Columbine High School and gave authorities the definite indication Wainwright was planning an attack at Southern Miss."

Before or After VT?

Here's something interesting--Hopkins has always said that YW's offending words were posted BEFORE the Virginia Tech incident, but we know that YW's bulletin quoting the Columbine guys was sent out AFTER the VT shooting and didn't spell out a threat to anyone.

"Authorities say they do not believe the threats were in any way related to the Virginia Tech massacre. The MySpace.com postings evidently existed prior to the horror in Blacksburg."
[same link]

Here's a link to the Student Printz's archive of YW's MySpace bulletins provided by dorkface.



Since none of the HA stories or forum posts from April are still in existence, I can't find anything for sure, but I seem to remember that the bulletins above were sent out post-VT, which makes it curious that Hopkins would say that YW's offending posts existed before VT and then cite a post-VT bulletin as evidence that YW was planning something.

The post-VT nature of the dorkface-posted bulletins seems to be confirmed in this David McRaney editorial:

"Wainwright has told both WDAM and The Hattiesburg American this is all a misunderstanding. He said the things he posted that got him arrested were benign criticisms of the way the Virginia Tech shootings were being reported including references to the Columbine shootings. His descriptions seem to match what is being posted in forums. "

There have been so many conflicting details given since April, it's difficult to keep it all straight....