So aside from prosecutors gone wild, I also blame the public as well. The hysteria about children and porn has gone beyond reason. Here I'm speaking about the Julie Amero Case, where a teacher is facing 40 years in jail for an obvious mistake. Here is the story:

Washington Post, 25 Jan 2007, Substitute Teacher Faces Jail Time Over Spyware

A 40-year-old former substitute teacher from Connecticut is facing prison time following her conviction for endangering students by exposing them to pornographic material displayed on a classroom computer.

Local prosecutors charged that the teacher was caught red-handed surfing for porn in the presence of seventh graders. The defense claimed the graphic images were pop-up ads generated by spyware already present on the computer prior to the teacher's arrival. The jury sided with the prosecution and convicted her of four counts of endangering a child, a crime that brings a punishment of up to 10 years per count. She is due to be sentenced on March 2.

I had a chance this week to speak with the accused, Windham, Conn., resident Julie Amero. Amero described herself as the kind of person who can hardly find the power button on a computer, saying she often relies on written instructions from her husband explaining how to access e-mail, sign into instant messaging accounts and other relatively simple tasks.

On the morning of Oct 19, 2004, Amero said she reported for duty at a seventh grade classroom at Kelly Middle School in Norwich, Conn. After stepping out into the hall for a moment, Amero returned to find two students hovering over the computer at the teacher's desk. As supported by an analysis of her computer during the court proceedings, the site the children were looking at was a seemingly innocuous hairstyling site called "new-hair-styles.com." Amero said that shortly thereafter, she noticed a series of new Web browser windows opening up displaying pornographic images, and that no matter how quickly she closed each one out, another would pop up in its place.

So she didn't take her young charges to a porn-palace, it was something beyond her control. But what happened next is classic American Nightmare: the kids go home, tell their idiot parents they saw porn (OMG - how will they ever be able to live a normal life ever again?), and immediately the parents look for someone to hang. The school officials, who should have had firewall software to block such sites let the software expire and instead of backing up the teacher let her take the fall for a simple mistake. If the prosecutor had any decency he would never have brought this to trial. They even had a police witness who examined the computer and erroneously concluded that the novice teacher was most likely looking at porn before class.

But an expert who was not allowed to testify for technical reasons concluded otherwise:

Ars Technica,
14 Feb 2007,
Teacher faces jail time for porn pop-ups

In court, school officials testified that the school's firewall software had indeed expired, that the anti-virus software on the computer was long out of date, and that there were no anti-spyware tools on the machine. A computer expert hired by Amero's lawyers—who was ultimately blocked from presenting his testimony because it was not made available to the prosecution before the case went to court—claimed that there was evidence that spyware/adware was, in fact, installed on the computer for weeks before Amero's arrival at the school.

By a miracle she's getting a new trial, although the proper, decent thing to do is simply drop the case.

Ars Technica,
6 Jun 2007,
Substitute teacher spared sentencing for porn pop-ups, gets new trial

The computer in question was sent to a Connecticut state laboratory after the original trial finished, and the judge announced today that the lab findings may contradict those presented by the prosecution's computer expert at trial. Amero's lawyers asked for and received a new trial, and the request was not opposed by the prosecution. A date has yet to be set.

You can send money to the Julie Amero Defense Fund.

Here is a list of the prosecutor and others in the case.

Can anyone reading the facts in this case explain to me why anyone would have brought this case to trial? We need to reign in our Prosecutors and the rest of this country needs to take a chill-pill before we end up with our own Shariah law without any help from Muslims.

Soon we'll be hanging gays in public.

Update: The Case is Over, although Justice was Not Served

---

Anyone may republish this article for non-commercial use without asking my permission. I make it easy, see details here.

If this is your first time here, please read my Comment Policy HERE.

comments powered by Disqus

---