Misdemeanor Plea Ends Norwich Pornography Case

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from the Hartford Courant: "Almost 18 months after a pornography conviction that could have sent her to jail for 40 years was thrown out, former Norwich substitute teacher Julie Amero plead guilty to a single charge of disorderly conduct Friday afternoon. The plea deal before Superior Court Judge Robert E. Young in Norwich ends a long-running drama that attracted attention from around the world. ... She had originally been charged with 10 counts of risk of injury to a minor and later convicted on four of them. ... In June of 2007, Judge Hillary B. Strackbein tossed out Amero's conviction on charges that she intentionally caused a stream of 'pop-up' pornography on the computer in her classroom and allowed students to view it. Confronted with evidence compiled by forensic computer experts, Strackbein ordered a new trial, saying the conviction was based on 'erroneous' and 'false information.'"

Comments

Re:About Time

[kobaz]

It's about "making an example" rather than finding the truth and having the case dismissed entirely.

Justice Still Not Done

[JimMcc]

The courts say that evidence was flawed. They through out that case as clear cut abuse. And what does the DA do? The say they'll charge here again.

So in order to avoid further embarrassment they "let her off" with a charge of disorderly conduct.

She still got screwed for something she was a victim of!

Re:Justice Still Not Done

[Repossessed]

Not only did they go after her again, but they refused to go after the cop who lied in court about the forensic evidence, and the prosecutors who suppressed a state forensic report that concluded the popups were from spyware.

Re:Justice Still Not Done

[Atlantis-Rising]

That is one of the more moronic things I've heard in a while, and every so often, it keeps coming up again.

Firstly, cops and lawyers are not supposed to presume innocence. The justice system is, and the Court as an entity is supposed to presume it at a trial, but the prosecutors have no such limitation. Cops, of course, have nothing to do with guilt or innocence at all, really. The presumption of innocence is a legal theory for how defendants are supposed to be treated... but the whole point of the court system is that you throw evidence before a Court and see what sticks. That's what it's doing.

Secondly, your idea, like many others that have come before it, would cripple the justice system to no appreciable gain. The Court as an entity is designed to be independent so that there are limited or no repercussions of arriving at a specific judgment- specifically so that it will not be constrained as you are suggesting.

Re:Justice Still Not Done

[sjames]

but the whole point of the court system is that you throw evidence before a Court and see what sticks. That's what it's doing.

The instant a prosecutor or cop attempts to bury exculpatory evidence or fabricate damning evidence, they cross the line and become criminals themselves. There is a certain justice in them facing exactly the criminal sanctions they unjustly tried to push upon an innocent citizen.

At the very least, they should never work in the fields of justice or law enforcement again.

A prosecutor's job is to get the guilty convicted, not simply to get convictions at any cost. While there should be a high threshold of proof to convict a prosecutor or cop, fabricating evidence or suppressing exculpatory evidence should meet that threshold.

Re:Justice Still Not Done

[arashi no garou]

Though I will agree that "power junkie" cops exist, I must say that you grossly misunderstood the meaning behind my emphasis. It's the same kind of "need" to do your job well and proper that anyone who excels at their profession should feel. Would you want a house designed by an architect who didn't care whether the floors and walls fell in on you within a month?

It's that desire to do the best you can do that separates a good cop from the rest. Yes, the power junkie type sometimes do a great job too, but they almost always fall victim to the power trip eventually.

I will say, too, that time and again I've seen investigators do the right thing and back off a suspect when it's obvious they aren't guilty. It literally makes no sense to continue to follow false leads, power trip or not.

As for your bonus compensation theory, well in my department detectives don't get any compensation beyond the annual cost of living raise. Bonuses don't exist in a government job, at least not on the county level; you're trying to apply capitalistic values to a government entity and it doesn't work that way. They do get "Detective of the Month" plaques for solving particularly difficult cases, and in my opinion they are well deserved.

And just so we're clear on my personal stake: I'm not a cop, never been one and don't want to be. I'm literally not enough of an asshole to be one. I was told that by a supervisor early in my career in law enforcement and I wasn't offended at all. I know it's not in my blood to be one and I'd be a lousy one if I tried. I'm neither a cop-hater nor a cop groupie; I do my job (communications) and I'm damn good at it, and the guys and gals I work with are, for the most part, good cops. I've known a few bad ones too over the years, and I have no truck with that type. I'll call out a bad cop in a heartbeat, as will any of my coworkers. We don't like that shit in our ranks.

wait what

[Brian Gordon]

Don't tag this suddenoutbreakofcommonsense! Some poor teacher was just convicted of a misdemeanor for something that she had no control over.

Re:wait what

[cob666]

I don't recall there being any evidence that she was surfing questionable websites after hours. Also, she was a substitute teacher so how come nobody was looking at what the real teacher was doing with that computer after hours.

Re:wait what

[Anonymous Coward]

because many teachers are drowning in apathy

Many teachers are drowning apathy because they're powerless to deal with shithead kids and their shithead "me-first" baby-boomer parents who are too busy with their careers and reliving their youth to get off their asses and take responsibility for their shithead kids' actions as well as teaching their kids to be responsible for their own actions. Don't blame the teacher for the fuckups of yourself and your shithead kids.

Re:wait what

[Ant P.]

not our problem

What a shining example you set.

Re:wait what

[EastCoastSurfer]

Since when was the truth flamebait?

Travesty

[Rinisari]

This is still a travesty of justice. Disorderly conduct and neutering her of her source of income is terrible for something of which she had no control.

Re:Travesty

[maxume]

Suspending her from working in that school system for a couple of months would be a slap on the wrist.

Bringing in the DA was reactionary.

Re:Travesty

[TerranFury]

You used the phrase, "protect kids in their care." The court used the phrase "risk of injury to a minor." Will people please stop this disingenuous rhetoric? What injury was risked? "Mental trauma" associated with seeing boobies? From what did these children need protecting?

The 'poor little children' involved were 7th graders. That makes them about 13 years old, which puts some of them at the beginning and some of them at the middle of puberty. Now look at some data which indicates that the median age of first intercourse in the U.S. is just under 17, and realize that if that's the median, then half of people first had sex earlier than this, and there is likely a non-negligible portion of the histogram that is nonzero at the 7th grade level.

For many of the children in that classroom, do you really believe that this was their first exposure to porn?

Now let's look at the balance of harms. On the one hand, we have a woman who lost her job and, in all likelihood, her ability to teach anywhere else ever again. And on the other -- some pubescent students saw things a good portion of them have likely already seen anyway.

So was this really fair?

Re:Travesty

[legirons]

The real question is: which of the programs or websites was responsible for showing porn to children?

Bonus question for the prosecutor to answer: who wrote that program or website?

Re:Travesty

[MindlessAutomata]

And a better point is, which damage, exactly, is caused? Believe it or not, sex is not intrinsically "damaging" in the slightest. Attitudes toward sex, the same attitudes that caused this poor woman to be harassed, are what make any sight of sexual activity "damaging" by programming children to view sex negatively or as "forbidden" or something to hide and be ashamed of.

The mentality of the "justice" department and the prosecutor here have done far more damage to the teacher AND the "children" (12-13 year olds are not really that innocent, as you noted) involved.

Re:Travesty

[enzyme6]

I won't comment on whether or not this was fair or not... The whole thing seems fishy, but the teacher herself plead guilty to the misdemeanor for whatever reason.. Anyway, my comment is more in response to whether or not kids are harmed by sexual content.. Your argument is basically that since the median age for first intercourse in the US is 17, claims of harm caused by sexual content must be exaggerated if not false. My response, however, would be that environmental influence - specifically media influence - results in the median age of first intercourse being what it is: http://www.rand.org/news/press/2008/11/03/. If this is the case, then the question is whether there is anything wrong w/ the median age being what it is - 17. The argument here turns on your view on sex. Is sex something to be valued, or is it simply to be used for pleasure between any number of persons and any number of times? For me, sex is something to be enjoyed only in marriage. When sex is permitted outside marriage, there is really nothing more to it than the act itself. You have people taking advantage of each other for a period of time for the sake of pleasure and nothing else. It does nothing to develop the relationship between two people. This is why I would posit that sex at 17 is harmful. Kids are getting involved in things that they don't understand will affect them the rest of their lives. Do you think that when one person has sex and then almost flippantly moves on to the next, the first partner doesn't get hurt in the process? Do you think the act of sex does not lead to any emotional bonds?

Re:About Time

[TheGavster]

That was so that the justice system could point to something and say "See! She IS a deviant! We didn't incarcerate an innocent and waste everyone's time and taxdollars over something that is frivolous by inspection!".

Baka.

[girlintraining]

The sad part is that it took a bunch of forensic experts and a lot of taxpayer dollars several months to convince the court that pornography can appear in popups when browsing the internet that the user didn't explicitly ask for. This is just another reason why computer crimes need special courts to process cases -- the level of computer literacy amongst court officials is still very low, and at the risk of being yelled at for saying so... It's because many of these judges are at or past retirement age and haven't the inclination to learn.

Re:Baka.

[Atlantis-Rising]

The reason is because it doesn't matter; the Court doesn't need to have perfect knowledge over all the subjects over which it governs.

The only case in which it is generally useful to set up special courts is where the law is very complicated or unusual- UCMJ appeals courts, tax courts, that sort of thing, because the law itself would not be something your average judge would know about in detail.

However, in the case of a simple trial like this, it is not the responsibility of the judge to be informed. It is the responsibility of the lawyers to inform the Court. A Court should not be making decisions on the basis of its own investigations, after all, at least not in an adversarial situation.

Re:About Time

[rtfa-troll]

I'm not sure it's really so much "making an example" as avoiding any compensation claims. She's been unfairly prosecuted. Everything the prosecutor said outside the court could have been sued over since, if she was innocent, it would have been proven slanderous. Now she has one charge and an easy risk of getting into more trouble if she opens up any further court action. I think it's more about protecting one particular prosecutor by keeping her out of the way than any particular global message.

Re:New Meaning

[shrubya]

Obviously I'm new here compared to a 2-digit ID, but come on and RTFA.

She was a SUBSTITUTE teacher. There is no possible way that a substitute could download, install, and run an anti-malware app in the handful of minutes notice she had before classes began. Even if she were allowed to install apps onto school PCs, which is unlikely.

If this were a man,

[Anonymous Coward]

there wouldn't have been any chance for a plea bargain. The poor bastard would have been lynched.

Re:If this were a man,

[Frosty Piss]

The kind of thing you describe is why any intellegent person should think twice about going into teaching. It's just too risky.

Re:If this were a man,

[TerranFury]

The kind of thing you describe is why any intellegent person should think twice about going into teaching. It's just too risky.

I've heard other people say this as well, and there's an element of truth to it. Unfortunately, what does this do to society? What happens when children -- especially boys -- have no male coaches, mentors, scout leaders... because it was "too risky?" This kind of paranoia is destroying communities.

Re:New Meaning

[digitrev]

Doing a quick bit of research shows that they had a copy of Symantec WebNOT filter. However, their copy didn't have a license for updates, so they missed out on all the new porn that appears daily.

Misplaced priorities

[mrraven]

And if the kids had been exposed to violent images like a war that has killed a million people far from removing the kids from the room we'd have a fund raising drive to support the glorious war crime committing troops, right?

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/03/13/winter_soldier/

Where the fuck are our priorities?

Considering our society is committing war crimes and the economy is going down the drain I think the kiddies seeing a titty is the least of our worries. They are doing to learn where babies come from at some point, why are we so hung about that?

http://books.google.com/books?id=-A-7d-2VpwcC&pg=PA122&lpg=PA122&dq=Europe+nude+advertising&source=web&ots=Q9pqfc6bGy&sig=TMqCxpzJk3sOB5TXsvPNz9UH91M&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=3&ct=result

Americans need to grow up and get our priorities straight or we will continue to fall behind Europe and Asia and become a laughing stock country, no longer famous for tech but for puritan religious fanatics much like Iran.

Re:Misplaced priorities

[TerranFury]

Actually, we don't show graphic images from the war on the news. That's part of the problem. If we did, maybe people would be less inclined to support it.

Re:About Time

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

"Casting doubt on the effectiveness of state apparatus".

I'm joking, of course; but it seems that, if your case has made the system look sufficiently foolish, you can't be allowed to get away completely.

Re:New Meaning

[TerranFury]

I also imagine she received better treatment than if she were a male

Indeed. Had she been male, she'd be going door to door nowadays introducing herself as the friendly neighborhood sex offender.

Re:Disgraceful DA

[jdc]

Maybe prosecutors need alternate "metrics for success"?

If my job performance was based on my percentage of successful convections and I knew I was assigned a looser case, it's up to me to think of alternate ways to succeed at my job

A system that encourages this behavior is totally broken

Re:About Time

[lysergic.acid]

this is a clear case of criminal negligence. and i'm not talking about the teacher. i'm talking about the judge, the police, and the prosecutor who, either through malice or incompetence, tried to lock an innocent woman up for 40 years.

at the very least they should be fired from their posts. anyone with even the slightest shred of reason and experience using a computer could see how idiotic it is punish someone for browser pop-ups she had no control over. if anything, it should be the site owners who use pornographic pop-ups with indiscretion or install adware/malware on the computers of unsuspecting users who should have been put on trial.

if a teacher can be tried for unprofessional/disorderly conduct and lose her teaching license based on things which she had no reasonable control over, then those involved in the earlier case decision can certainly be fired for their actions which they had full conscious control over, and which have actually resulted in real harm--ending the career of an innocent school teacher and generally ruining her life.

the scary thing is, the state's attorney still thinks she should have been put away. and that guy is still the New London County state's attorney.

Why is America so easily traumatized?

[A12m0v]

a few porno pop-ups big deal, close them and move on with your life!
it's just like with Janet Jackson milk shake, the whole nation overreacted!

I'm embarrassed by stuff like this! why can't we be like one of them cool European countries, where people aren't too crazy about Jesus and there isn't a war on sex?

Re:About Time

[British]

I'm curious what they are making an example of. It seems that the gross IT incompetence at the school is now getting other people possibly sent to jail, even if they didn't do anything. You have to love computers in schools. They have un-maintained PCs, you have no authority to do anything, and no waiver you can sign saying you can't be sued for any damages. But if a porn pop-up happens and you're within 3 feet of it, you're busted.

Re:Sanctimony

[sjames]

I'd say the translation is more like "Id'a had her railroaded in a flash and a great notch in my belt if the damned media hadn't gotten involved. Still, I'm not at all sorry I tried, it's not like I'll ever face consequences for my actions!".

Re:About Time

[91degrees]

I agree but for different reasons. Either they thought she deserved a 40 year penalty and have decided to let her off, or they didn't think she deserved that and used a baseless threat to intimidate her.

I can sort of see the argument for plea bargaining down from murder to manslaughter (still disagree but that's a completely different point), but plea bargaining down from 40 years to a minor misdemeanor makes a mockery of the law.

Imagine THIS.....

[IHC Navistar]

Just imagine the penalty if this had been a male teacher who did that.

Kinda funny how you never hear Feminazis criticize the disproportionate penalties in sex crimes between men and women.