When Justice is not only blind, but computer illiterate

Remember the pop-up porn case? The teacher who was charged (and now convicted) of morals charges for exposing seventh graders to pornography? She's facing a possible 40 year sentence for being the victim of spyware:

Julie Amero, a substitute teacher in Norwich, Connecticut, has been convicted of impairing the morals of a child and risking injury to a minor by exposing as many as ten seventh-grade students to porn sites.

It's a short story: On October, 19, 2004, Amero was a substitute teacher for a seventh-grade language class at Kelly Middle School. A few students were crowded around a PC; some were giggling. She investigated and saw the kids looking at a barrage of graphic, hard-core pornographic pop-ups.

The prosecution contended that she had used the computer to visit porn sites.

The defense said that wasn't true and argued that the machine was infested with spyware and malware, and that opening the browser caused the computer to go into an endless loop of pop-ups leading to porn sites.

Amero maintains her innocence. She refused offers of a plea bargain and now faces an astounding 40 years in prison (her sentencing is on March 2).

Let's remember the proportionality of this offence: murderers and rapists get significantly shorter sentences than this. This case is a terrible example of both judicial computer illiteracy and the modern witch-hunt whenever children's interests are involved. One can only assume that the presiding judge has somehow never encountered an unwanted pop-up from a porn site (hard though that may be to believe).

Although an appeal is pretty much guaranteed, regardless of the sentence to be handed down on March 2nd, the case should never have gone to trial in the first place.