Via Pandagon, the story of Julie Amero, who was obviously railroaded for the crime of failing to erase porn spam pop-ups that mysteriously appeared on a school computer while she was a substitute teacher.
Right? Well, it’s hard to tell from the Pandagon or Alternet articles, which are less about what actually happened and more about righteous indignation that somebody would be convicted of showing porn to 12-year-olds; they’ve already seen porn anyway. And she wasn’t allowed to prove that somebody else surfed onto porn sites. Besides, the school should have stopped it with filters, and somehow, this is patriarchal oppression or something.
My lawyer sense started tingling when I noticed that Amanda had skipped over one very interesting fact: Amero’s lawyer failed to notify the prosecution of the “she was helpless before infectious malware” defense in a timely manner, and so her expert was barred from offering any testimony along those lines. Hm.
As far as her helpless reaction to the porn? Amaro turned one kid’s face away, but they could see the screen from their seats. The police testified that the graphic sites had been accessed during the time Amero was in the class, not before. It apparently didn’t occur to her to, oh, turn off the monitor, turn the screen, or unplug the computer. Or to call the principal’s or custodian’s office for help.
On the “forty years in prison”, this seems to be drawn from Amero’s conviction on four separate counts of a crime that calls for up to ten years in prison. To get forty years, she would have to be given the maximum penalty for each and have the time served consecutively, rather than concurrently. Norm Pattis would know Connecticut criminal law better than I, but I’m not seeing that Amero is likely to be given the harshest possible sentence without some kind of aggravating factors, such as a criminal history, which she doesn’t have.
Is it possible Amero was railroaded by paranoid prudes? As lawyers say, anything’s possible. But the facts that have been floating around so far don’t suggest that we should be checking the Connecticut court for railroad tracks just yet.
mythago
10 Responses to ““Activist” courts – criminal division”
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When I first heard the story, as a law student I knew that there was something not being explained. It seems like there’s another story in there somewhere. I hope it comes out, because the story doesn’t make any sense the way it is now.
K
Mythago, did you read my article? It’s not about righteous indignation, it’s about what happened inside Amero’s computer and why the jury hardly heard any of that evidence.
1. The police analyzed her computer, but didn’t check for malware. The software they used can’t tell the difference between human clicks and malware redirects. But the police aren’t sophisticated enough to know the limits of their software.
2. For whatever reason, the defense lawyer didn’t get around to mentioning the malware defense in discovery. The first the prosecutor heard about malware was from the mouth of the defense’s expert witness.
3. So, the defense expert didn’t get to present most of his evidence.
I did read your article, and referred to both it and Amanda’s, the latter of which seemed kind of a stretch to me (sorry, Amanda).
If the expert’s opinion is that there is an innocent explanation for the appearance of the images, then the defense lawyer was ineffective within the meaning of the Sixth Amendment. Apparently, there was no disclosure of this witness until time of trial. It may serve as an appeal issue, however. Connecticut appellate court not long ago held it was error to preclude use of untimely alibi notice.
Norm, thanks for jumping in.
As a layperson I fail to see why her lawyer failing to discover her defense arugment in a timely manner is so suspicious. Isn’t it just as likely that she hired a less than brilliant lawyer who doesn’t know enough about technology, or that their finances were too limited to pursue all their options?
I don’t know a damn thing about computers, and I can tell you that the absolute last thing I’d do in this situation would be to run around ripping computer cords out of the walls. Damaging school property isn’t an offense that’s taken lightly, especially when it’s valuable equiptment.
Like you say, it’s surely possible that Ms. Amero is some miscreant who deliberately showed her class porn and enjoyed their reactions, if that’s what you’re implying because I’m not really sure, but it’s not more plausible than Amanda’s version.
Christobal, you can’t just show up on the day of trial and say “Here’s my expert, and by the way, he’s going to tell the jury all about a new defense we just thought up.”
You don’t need to know much about computers to press the “off” button on the monitor, do you?
I have no idea what happened in this case. I am a little unpleasantly surprised by the fact so many people in the Pandagon comments thread seem so adamant that a 40 year old, presumably college educated women who has worked in school systems for years was just so overcome with the vapors or something when the porn started that she couldn’t figure out how to turn off the computer, or the monitor, or at least cover up the screen. Should someone this fragile and easily overwhelmed be teaching? Yeesh. I’d bet she has a computer at home that she uses daily, and turns on and off at will.
To be clear: I have no idea whether she is gulty or innocent, and even if guilty of everything she was apparently accused of, I don’t think she should go to jail. But the “she was just a helpless luddite old lady rendered witless by porn pop-ups” defense offered by so many commenters is quite annoying.
Having had my PC hijacked by spyware, my first response to the “why didn’t she turn it off” questions was “depends on the malware”. Some of these programs actually block shutdown of the computer. Also, in my kids’ school, the computer units are slaved together on a main power switch/power surge device, so the only way to turn any part of the computer off if you can’t use the normal procedure is to turn the whole thing off at the main switch.
However, she does seem extremely clueless in that putting an opaque bag over the monitor or a piece of construction paper on the screen did not appear to occur to her.
I wonder if she would have been prosecuted if the kids saw only 30 seconds of porn, though.
Majikthise has spoken at length to the defense expert, who is apparently going to put up a podcast of his findings–I will link to it when I have more information.