Connecticut Substitue Teacher Convicted in Questionable Pop-Up Porn Case
Hat tip to Jay Caruso at See You at The Yard, Meat for stepping outside of the box at his site to blog about the sad story involving substitute teacher Julie Amero of Norwich, Connecticut, who faces up to 40 years in prison because of the following incident.
Alternet also has some additional key details about the case.
As they say, read the whole thing.
Like Jay, the two key aspects of this case that bother me are the fact that the detective did not check for malware or spyware on the computer first and that the prosecution worked so vigorously to have evidence suppressed that strongly supported Amero’s claim that malware was to blame.
Given the lack of criminal history, it’s not likely she’d get anywhere near the 40 year maximum of jail time. But at the very least, she’s had her teaching credentials taken away because of incompetence at the IT level of the school she was subbing at, and overzealousness by the police and prosecution.
State Prosecutor David Smith said he wondered why Julie Amero didn’t just pull the plug on her classroom computer.
The six-person jury Friday may have been wondering the same thing when they convicted Amero, 40, of Windham of four counts of risk of injury to a minor, or impairing the morals of a child. It took them less than two hours to decide the verdict. She faces a sentence of up to 40 years in prison.
Oct. 19, 2004, while substituting for a seventh-grade language class at Kelly Middle School, Amero claimed she could not control the graphic images appearing in an endless cycle on her computer.
“The pop-ups never went away,” Amero testified. “They were continuous.”
The Web sites, which police proved were accessed while Amero was in the classroom, were seen by as many as 10 minor students. Several of the students testified during the three-day trial in Norwich Superior Court to seeing images of naked men and women.
Computer expert W. Herbert Horner, testifying in Amero’s defense, said he found spyware on the computer and an innocent hair styling Web site “that led to this pornographic loop that was out of control.”
“If you try to get out of it, you’re trapped,” Horner said.
But Smith countered Horner’s testimony with that of Norwich Police Detective Mark Lounsbury, a computer crimes investigator. On a projected image of the list of Web sites visited while Amero was working, Lounsbury pointed out several highlighted links.
“You have to physically click on it to get to those sites,” Smith said. “I think the evidence is overwhelming that she did intend to access those Web sites.”
Among the sites Amero visited were meetlovers.com and femalesexual.com, along with others with more graphic names.
Alternet also has some additional key details about the case.
As they say, read the whole thing.
Like Jay, the two key aspects of this case that bother me are the fact that the detective did not check for malware or spyware on the computer first and that the prosecution worked so vigorously to have evidence suppressed that strongly supported Amero’s claim that malware was to blame.
Given the lack of criminal history, it’s not likely she’d get anywhere near the 40 year maximum of jail time. But at the very least, she’s had her teaching credentials taken away because of incompetence at the IT level of the school she was subbing at, and overzealousness by the police and prosecution.
