Julie Amero

Although this happened a few days ago, I only just found out - Julie Amero has been given a retrial! Which is good news as I believe that if this case went to trial again, she would get an acquittal.

By now, most of you are probably wondering who Julie Amero is. You can find a pretty good write-up of the case from csriu (the document is on the right hand side - I have also given a direct link to that doc here). Or you could just keep reading for the short version.

Julie Amero is a substitute teacher in the US. On October 19 2004, she was called in to a middle school to act as a sub. As she was a sub, she didn't have any password access to logon to the school network and was told that she was not to turn off the PC. She was also computer illiterate and didn't actually know how to turn off a PC!

The PCs in the particular school she was subbing at were not up-to-date in that the anti-virus and anti-adware software was not maintained (which I think may have been against state regulations - but thats another issue). This is a very important point so its worth repeating - the anti-virus and anti-adware software on the PC was not update.

During the class, pornography started to pop-up on the PC. Julie didn't know what to do (remember she is computer illiterate and was specifically told not to switch off the PC) so she just tried her best to stop the class from seeing the porn. Despite her efforts, some of the children did manage to see some of the porn on the screen. When the class finished, Julie immediately ran to the teachers lounge and got help from the other teachers.

She was arrested and convicted on four counts (one of which was impairing the morals of a minor). The maximum sentence she could have received on the above was 40 years.

What really gets me is the seeming incompetence and duplicity of everyone involved in this case. The list is too long to go into here (you can read the article above for more details - also, try running a search online yourself and you will find that there are lots of articles talking about this) but it seems like a lot of people's heads need to roll from this.

Just a couple of choice examples. The investigators never checked the PC for a virus or other malware. Considering the description of events given by Julie, it defies logic that the investigators never checked the PC.

The school officials themselves seem to be seriously shady. Rather than take responsiblity, they seem to prefer withholding testimony in order to save their own asses. Way to act as a role model for the kids you f@cking bunch of losers.

The prosecution also managed to find another computer illiterate to testify as an "expert" witness to say that based on the fact that the links on the webpages were now blue, this could only mean that Julie had clicked on those links. No. Just No. I should say at this stage that I am giving the "expert" witness the benefit of the doubt by calling him computer illiterate. The alternative is to call him a deceitful lying son of a female dog.

Anyway, the above are just a couple of examples. If you are interested, I would highly suggest you read the document I linked to above as it has a better analysis than I could ever write. Also, you can visit the Julie Amero blog.