State of Connecticut v. Julie Amero

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The controversial trial of Julie Amero has been the subject of international media coverage. Julie Amero (born 1967) is a former substitute teacher who was previously convicted of four counts of risk of injury to a minor, or impairing the morals of a child. On June 6, 2007 the conviction was vacated, and she was granted a new trial.

1 Timeline
- 1.1 Controversy
2 References
3 External links

[edit] Timeline

On October 19, 2004, Julie Amero was substituting for a seventh-grade language class at Kelly Middle School in Norwich, Connecticut. The teacher's computer was accessed by pupils while the regular teacher, Matthew Napp, was out of the room. When Julie took charge, the computer started showing pornographic images.

On January 5, 2007, Amero was convicted in Norwich Superior Court on four counts of risk of injury to a minor, or impairing the morals of a child. Her sentencing was delayed four times after her conviction, with both the prosecution and judge not satisfied that all aspects of the case had been assessed.^[1] The felony charges for which she was originally convicted carry a maximum prison sentence of 40 years.^[2]

On June 6, 2007, a New London superior court judge threw out the conviction of Amero, she was granted a new trial and entered a plea of not guilty. The new trial date has not yet been set; it is unclear at this time if the State's Attorney of Connecticut will pursue a second trial.^[3]

[edit] Controversy

Amero and her supporters say that the old computer, along with the school network, lacked firewall or anti-spyware protection to prevent inappropriate pop-ups. The school used the Symantec WebNOT filter; however, it was not licensed for software updates and so did not block newly discovered pornographic websites.^[4]

Many computer experts believe that spyware and malware programs could have hijacked the machine’s browser so that it visited pornography sites without prompting and created the computer logs that helped convict Amero.^[4] According to the defense's expert witness, W. Herbert Horner, the defense at the first trial was not permitted to present prepared evidence in support of this theory.^[5] On March 6, 2007, a $2,400 advertisement appeared in the Hartford Courant signed by 28 computer science professors who said that they think that Amero could not have controlled the pornographic pop-ups.^[6]