Jury Convicts Substitute Teacher for “Allowing” Racy Pop-Ups on Classroom Computer   7/11/2007 - 1,531 views, 3 Comments

Julie Amero, for her part, has steadfastly maintained that, because as a substitute teacher she lacked a password to log into the classroom computer, another teacher logged her in, and told her not to log off. It was while the computer was left logged on that the pop-ups started occuring.

The prosecution claimed that Amero had surfed to forbidden sites, and that is why the pop-ups started coming.

However, the defense had evidence that the computer had been compromised by malware, and was infected, having nothing to do with Julie Amero at all - but the defense was precluded from introducing the evidence which would have refuted the prosecution’s contentions.

And so Julie Amero was convicted on four felony counts.

Based on what the defense had always claimed was false information.

Fortunately, the defense has since come up with new evidence that is so compelling that the Judge has thrown out the conviction and granted the defense’s motion for a new trial, indicating that “The jury may have relied, at least in part, on that false information.”

“The State and the defense now possess additional forensic evidence concerning the history of the computer’s use both before and after the alleged incident, the manner and methodology of the analysis of the computer’s use, and the interpretation of the analysis. Had that information been available to the State at the time of trial, the State would have been precluded from urging and would not have urged the jury to reach certain inaccurate conclusions regarding (among other things) the alleged purposeful access to offensive Web sites,” stated the defense in their motion for a new trial.

Explained Alex Eckelberry, president of Sunbelt Software, who provided a security analysis of the computer to the defense, “The primary reason that I got involved was to get Julie out of this train wreck, but it was also to bring awareness to the problem of malware and forensic analysis - it is a big problem.”