aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Sunday, March 25, 2007

Waiting for news of Julie Amero

Rick Green has a piece in The Hartford Courant telling the whole sad story of the Connecticut substitute teacher convicted and awaiting sentencing for exposing children to porn on a classroom computer. She’s scheduled to be sentenced this week:

The school district and police department are not talking. Returning a call Friday morning, Chief State’s Attorney Kevin Kane declined to comment about the case.

But Kane, [assistant state’s attorney David] Smith and others connected to the case have been deluged - and widely ridiculed - by computer security experts who say critical evidence was not considered and officials are now searching for ways to avoid Thursday’s sentencing. The state’s attorney’s office in Norwich is reconsidering its aggressive prosecution of Amero, sources close to the case say.

Smith, whose persuasive arguments convinced the jury of Amero’s guilt, would say only that before next Thursday, things “could very well change.”

Amero will ultimately be vindicated. Whether or not she can recover her reputation, the money spent, her emotional health or the two years and two months of her life eaten up by this is another question. But my concern is greater. My concern is this: Amero is not the only one.

Green notes that, “Before blogs, instant e-mail and the omnipresent Internet knitted the world together, Julie Amero might have merely faded away. Her trial generated little publicity beyond the local Norwich Bulletin newspaper, which has accepted Amero’s guilt with little questioning.”

This case shows that when overaggressive law enforcement is combined with limited computer forensics expertise, technophobia and sex panic combine in a toxic mixture to find innocent people guilty. For all the others who have not gotten our attention, this is the plea I’ve appended to all of my Amero posts:

WE NEED A COMPUTER FORENSICS INNOCENCE PROJECT; a Barry Sheck and Peter Neufeld of the computer forensics world. We need experts who believe in the presumption of innocence and are willing to spend the time it takes to dig through logs, registry entries and hard drives to find exculpatory material when present. This is hardly the first case of its kind and, unfortunately, it’s not likely be the last. Prosecutors who look for - and presume - guilt do selective searches for data supporting guilt; those accused rarely have the resources to pay computer forensics experts to counter that selective evidence.

Amero’s innocence is obvious to most of us on its face. Imagine if there were even just a bit more ambiguity. It wouldn’t make her guilty, but it would leave her a convicted felon and sex offender.

UPDATE: Sentencing has been delayed again, this time until April 26.