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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.'"
It's about "making an example" rather than finding the truth and having the case dismissed entirely.
The goal of computer science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it.
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!
Don't tag this suddenoutbreakofcommonsense! Some poor teacher was just convicted of a misdemeanor for something that she had no control over.
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.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
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!".
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
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.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
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.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Looks as thought the Prosecution backed down 95%, which shows they really had no case. But the Prosecution still wanted a conviction on ANY charge and likely threatened to go back with all the Felony charges if this teacher did not agree. Faced with this option it's no wonder she took the smaller fall. But someone higher up the Justice chain needs to review this case as it looks as though the Prosecution used their office and FEAR as they means to get this last conviction. i.e. this looks like completely flawed use of the Justice system. The really bad people here were the school administrators, IMHO, who did not keep up-to-date which would have prevented the porn pop=ups. Why is the Prosecutors office ignoring the bigger crime and going after one teacher? That's insane and needs review IMHO. Meantime this teacher now has a criminal mrecord and a "prior" which will follow her for the rest of her life. Any job interview will mean she will have to detail the offense and her "arrest record".
I agree that could very well be... But we all know that society's stance on "adult content" is ridiculous.
Had the teacher's computer shown pictures of guns, or someone getting maimed from styleproject, this would have never gone to court. If it had gotten any media attention at all, it would have been 10 seconds on the nightly news about a computer mishap.
The goal of computer science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it.
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.
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.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
"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.
I didn't follow this closely but per a previous /. article http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/13/0753209
1) an expert found the computer was infected on a hairstyling site, not porn surfing
2) "Amero testified that she had told four other teachers and the assistant principal about the popups, but received no assistance. "
3) "The school's internet filtration software was not working because it's license had expired."
Whether she had the technical ability to install a cleansing tool I don't know, but many businesses and institutions these days have policies about installing anything without approval... It wouldn't suprise me if the school rules barred her from installing something to fix herself.
I also imagine she received better treatment than if she were a male
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.
Actually, there are prosecutors and cops out there who will keep going after every case until they get "something" out of it. Even after an acquittal, they will basically put the defendant under a microscope and keep dragging them in on new charges until they get some sort of a guilty plea or conviction.
This is really common with organized crime prosecutions, with John Gotti being a textbook example. It took several tries, but they did finally get him.
"Amero was working on a very old Gateway PC running Windows 98, an extremely vulnerable setup .. Detective Mark Lounsbury .. admitted under cross-examination that the
prosecution never even checked the computer for malware"
don't talk to cops
davecb5620@gmail.com
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.
The body of psychological evidence indicates that children are suggestible, that memory is malleable, and that kids will report sexual abuse even when it did not occur. I'm remembering a famous experiment described in intro psychology courses: The setup was this: A toddler was taken into a mock doctor's office for a "checkup," in which the experimenter did nothing more than tie a small red string around the child's finger; this was videotaped by a hidden camera. Then, the child was interviewed in the manner common in sex-abuse legal cases at the time, in which she was presented with a doll and asked to indicate whether the doctor had touched her, and where. After repeated, gentle, innocuous-seeming questioning, the child reported obscene things that I could have not come up with myself; among other things, she reported that the doctor had rammed a stick into her vagina, which she pantomimed violently (the interview was also videotaped). What seems to have happened is that she responded subliminally to subtle, unintentional cues from the interviewer, and reported whatever the interviewer was afraid to (or wanted to?) hear. It's essentially the same phenomenon as what occurred with Clever Hans, the horse that could "do arithmetic." The horse was posed questions in the form of marks on the ground, and would tap out the answer -- one tap to say "one," two taps to say "two," etc -- in response. It astounded all observers, but what was actually happening is that the horse was picking up on the crowd's reaction to his tapping: Tension would build as he approached the right number, and then immediately release; this is when he would stop. In any event, the point is that apparently cut-and-dry testimonies are anything but, and people -- especially, but not just, children -- are hugely suggestible, and can honestly remember things that never happened as a subliminal response to unintentional bias in the interviewer.
The conclusion you're forced to draw is that there are hundreds of innocent men now in jail for sex crimes, especially crimes against children, that they didn't commit. The sad irony is that sexual abuse really is now happening -- in jail, and these men are the victims.
The kind of thing you describe is why any intellegent person should think twice about going into teaching. It's just too risky.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
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.
It sends a clear message that our criminal "justice" system is seriously broken. And it sends the unintended message that if you're smart and have an option, avoid teaching or substitute teaching, don't volunteer for Scouts or church activities that have anything to do with young people. You could even take it to the extreme of refusing to help a child in distress or render aid if a parent isn't around, because where kids are concerned, law enforcement is totally off the reservation. Something like this incident or a false charge and you could be dragging an arrest record around the rest of your life. It's just not worth the risk. That used to be a paranoid attitude but it doesn't seem so paranoid today.
So the next time you're tempted to complain about a lack of math and science teachers, remember this incident. The only people willing to get involved will be other parents and, ironically, the predators.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
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.