From MSNBC (via my Google account though, actually) comes this news, “Teachers’ porn conviction overturned.”
A substitute teacher was granted a new trial Wednesday after her conviction for failing to prevent students from viewing pornography on her computer raised thorny questions about who is ultimately responsible for screening unsavory online material.
The woman, Julie Amero, 40, of Windham, Conn., adamantly denied clicking on pornographic Web sites that appeared on her classroom’s computer screen in October 2004 while she was teaching seventh-graders at Kelly Middle School in Norwich.
Amero was convicted in January on four counts of risk of injury to a minor, but computer security experts and bloggers across the political spectrum rallied to Amero’s defense when evidence later emerged that her computer had been infected with spyware that caused pop-up ads to take over the screen.
First off, I don’t quite understand the way the law worked in this case– was this thrown out on appeal? Did a judge look at the jury’s decision and say “oh, this is just stupid,” and call for a new trial? It kind of sounds like the second one happened.
But second, I’m glad that someone came to their senses. I’m too lazy to go back and look at those articles now, but the level of dumb bunny -ness demonstrated by the jurors and other participants in the last trial on all this was startling. So Amero is getting a version of justice here for sure, but jeez, what an awful year or so it has been for her.