Although July approaches, it’s still not too late for a first-time criminal defendant to make her spring debut in federal court.

Media Village of the Damned: Press waiting for Lori Drew

Today Lori Drew, 49, appeared before magistrate Mark L. Abrams in downtown’s Roybal Federal Building. She’d come from Missouri to plead not guilty to four counts of conspiracy and unauthorized access of a Web site belonging to Beverly Hills-headquartered MySpace, the social-networking site owned by Fox Interactive Media Inc. She’s accused of creating, with the help of two others, a fake MySpace account on which she pretended to be a teenage boy. This was not done, the government says, to entrap would-be pedophiles or for purposes of identity theft, but to harass an adolescent girl who displeased her into committing suicide in 2006.

After Abrams scheduled the trial to begin July 29 in the courtroom of Judge George H. Wu, Drew and attorney Dean Steward left the hearing room to discuss details of her bond with federal officers. Meanwhile, a sizable encampment of reporters and news cameramen awaited Drew’s quick appearance on Temple Street. The sly matron however, fooled the media, just as she had allegedly tricked Megan Meier into thinking she was reading email from an admiring boy whose postings then viciously turned against the distraught girl, who hanged herself. Finally, after a long wait, Drew emerged -- to say nothing to the press.