"Popup Porn" Teacher Loses, Prosecutor Wins

Several weeks ago, we were alerted to the story of Julie Amero, the substitute teacher due to be sentenced on March 2nd in Norwich, Connecticut, for four counts of endangering a minor. Julie faces forty years in jail because hyperlinks embedded inside images on a web page she visited took her to a Russian sex site and then locked her classroom PC in a cycle of popups and new browser windows in the presence of seventh-graders.

As reported earlier, I have seen the javascript from the original web page and others we trust in the industry have studied the computer she used. We contacted Fox News and gave them this information and they have been diligent in reporting the story - yet one more story involving an ambitious prosecutor, a non-caring judge, and a less than diligent lawyer. Fingers are also being pointed now at the school IT administrator, who has admitted that the computers were not protected at the time.

At the trial, David Smith, the ambitious local Norwich prosecutor who brought the base, argued that it was possible to tell the mouse clicks leading to the URLs were made by a human with the intention of visiting a site. This is absolutely false. The javascript shows otherwise - there is no way of telling the images at new-hair-styles.com would take you to a Russian sex site - short of right-clicking on the page, selecting "view source" and sorting through the code.

While Amero sits at home awaiting whatever amount of the forty year sentence she gets, the Norwich, CT prosecutor, David Smith, is now rumored to have been promoted. What's next, a shot at a House seat? We can only hope that the local newspaper and the more informed citizens of Norwich wake up sometime soon and start picketing this guy's house for a retrial.

Amero's career as a teacher is over - she has been convicted of four counts of endangering a minor. Smith's career as a prosecutor is on the rise. Does anyone think this is a just result?