[Julie Amero] was substituting for an English class. She went to the restroom, and when she returned, students were gathered around a computer that was displaying porn pop-ups. Amero, who describes herself as a total computer novice, couldn’t make them stop, and she eventually ran to the teacher’s lounge to get help. In court, school officials admitted that the antivirus software installed on the PC was out of date, and antispyware programs were not installed. A school official did tell parents, however, that the school district had comprehensive filtering and firewall software in place at the time.
Although it’s hard to conjure up a simple explanation for why a substitute teacher would show middle-school students porn pop-ups on purpose, Amero was prosecuted on the ground that she had done this intentionally. She was eventually found guilty and faced the prospect of 40 years in jail because of the incident.
The idea that circumstances beyond my control could cost me the rest of my life in prison because of some superheated sexual paranoia that fuels illogically indignant parents and abusive prosecutors makes me want to surround my house with razor wire and land mines. Considering that in Ohio, you can be declared a sex offender without any criminal conviction whatsoever, I wonder if there is any truly safe place to live where children and their parents can’t potentially ruin your life at a whim.
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June 6th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
It is worse Aaron. My wife is a resource attorney for Washington state Public Defenders and there is a case in western Washington where a 15 year old is being prosecuted for looking at… wait for it… “child pornography.”
Let that roll around in your head for a while.
Now let’s make it worse…
The prosecutor will not share the evidence of the crime with the defense, as that would make them a felon, for sharing child pornography.
Let that roll around in your head for a while.
Now, let’s make it even worse…
The ONLY person who has seen this subject matter, other than the defendant of course, is a Police Detective, who everyone must take it as his word that the subject matter is indeed actually child pornography. I’ll repeat that: The actual evidence cannot be admitted in court, but instead we can only take the word of an agent of the State that the people depicted in the photographs are children. No poof, just his opinion.
We won the cold war, only to have become the Soviet Union. Go figure.
I am tryng to volunteer to testify for the defence, if only to have the State produce some evidence other than one man’s opinion, such as URL’s or IP addresses, etc. If this is *actually* child porn, then they should be prosecuting the ADULTS who are making and distributing it… not some hapless low-hanging fruit like a 15 year old boy fer chrissakes. They also need to live up to the rules of evidence and share the stuff with the defence bar. That is absolutely absurd to prosecute somebody for LOOKING at something and then withhold that very something from the defendant’s counsel!
Thomas Jefferson must be rolling in his grave at this wanton abuse of power by a tyrannical government!
–chuck