You may remember the case of Julie Amero, the teacher who allegedly exposed her seventh grade students to p*rn*graphy on a classroom PC. Amero's defense (not ably presented at her trial) was that she accessed no p*rn and that the computer was infected with malware that caused the p*rn sites to pop up faster than she could close them. Amero was nonetheless convicted of impairing the morals of a child and risking injury to a minor.Before she was sentenced, with the assistance of a new lawyer and a host of new evidence, Amero persuaded the judge to give her a new trial. The case has been languishing for some time. Last week, because she "wasn't in condition to endure another trial," Amero entered a guilty plea to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct and agreed to give up her teaching license. She was fined $100.
Amero's decision to put an end to her ordeal is understandable but unfortunate given the evidence of her innocence.
Read on for the details.
I recall sitting at my computer at work a few years ago and hitting a link to Paris Hilton and up popped about 35 successive links to porn sites and I couldn't get them all to close no matter how hard I tried. It went on for about a minute before I started laughing and pretty much gave up. It was a common computer problem at one time and I can see how if you were flustered in front of a bunch of kids you'd flounder around a bit before you figured out how to deal with it.
... imposing criminal liability on a relatively computer-illiterate teacher because she didn't think quickly enough is reprehensible. The result is a ruined life because the school system couldn't manage its IT competently and because prosecutors couldn't bring themselves to admit they made a mistake.