Leland says:

Thanks for pointing this one out. It is will go down as one of the worst miscarriages of justice of this decade. There is no excuse for what happened to this teacher. And there is no excuse for the stunningly ignorant that investigated and prosecuted it.

If there is such a thing as what comes around goes around…

marvin says:

I want to know what was in these people’s minds when they decided to prosecute this teacher??
The whole thing sounds crazy.
And even crazier when you realize that there were so many supposedly intelligent people involved in the whole process.

tommy says:

umm. windows 98. that sucked in like 1999 already. leaving that running on anything, and unprotected on top of it?? that’s more likely a punishable offense, but punishable only by a mild slap on the wrist.

prison for the person whose name hit the top of the sub list that morning when the real class teacher had a sore throat?

what kind of bullshit is that?

Steve Bass says:

I don’t agree with the juror’s decision as a juror. In my mind, she’s innocent. But I’m distressed at how many people don’t get it: Right or wrong, this is how our judicial system works. The guy listened to the testimony that may have been egregiously incorrect and did his best to follow the judge’s instructions (which I’ve examined and found surprisingly complicated). He cannot do anything to change the conviction.

The juror insisted it was fine to use his partial e-mail address and foolishly, I agreed. And it’s a mistake I won’t make again. That’s because more than rude, he’s been badgered by people writing hateful notes attacking him, his *personal* decision of losing weight, and God only knows what else. He shouldn’t have to be subjected to this harassment.

So why in the world did you expose the name and image of the juror? It adds absolutely nothing to the story. That, to coin a phrase, is pathetic. It’s immoral. And you ought to be ashamed for doing it.

–Steve Bass

Leland says:

Hey Steve,

I agree the personal slams on him are out of line. There is no question in my mind that the people handing him abuse should be at least talked to about harassment if not prosecuted. No wonder we can’t get people to serve on juries.

However, if the not-so-computer-literate juror did not want the heat, he should have stuck his foot in the fire. The fact and manner in which he did so speaks volumes to the computer ignorance of the juror.

Steve Bass says:

Leland:

He didn’t stick his foot in the fire — I did it for him by releasing his screen name.

–Steve

marvin says:

the state of connecticut is surrounded by a very dense layer of ozone.

Tim says:

“That’s because more than rude, he’s been badgered by people writing hateful notes attacking him, his *personal* decision of losing weight, and God only knows what else. He shouldn’t have to be subjected to this harassment.”

Seems like the person who is getting harrassed is the person who is going to jail, not the juror who didn’t even listen to what was said in court.

This juror can move, change his email address, even legally change his name. The teacher, however, won’t be able to escape her punishment.

Perhaps you have chosen the wrong career.

James says:

The heck with Fred. Unreasonable twits like him are hijacking our justice system and trying to impose downright medieval punishments on good citizens. They should be exposed, I have no sympathy for him So he gets some phone calls calling him a fat jerk. He voted to strip away 40 years of a woman’s life, and then boasted that he did the right thing.

For the record, I believe Julie is completely innocent. The worst you could possibly say is that she tried to stop the pop-ups, but was not as effective as she could have been.

But even IF Julie were guilty as sin, and purposely showed children hardcore pornography, then at most she should lose her job, have to perform a ton of community service, and receive some psychiatric counseling. Not 40 years in prison, come on. Kids shouldn’t ever see that stuff, but can you really say that it would scar them for life? Go after the people who install those pop-ups for crying out loud, not a poor teacher trying to do her job in a strange classroom.

Damn bullies.

James says:

Sorry, one final thought. Leland mentioned that it’s hard to get people to serve on juries. Well stuff like this is making it even scarier to people who want to become teachers.

MikeT says:

The woman clearly did not have a mens rea, aka guilty mind, which is still supposed to be required by our criminal law as much as Fred and his supporters want to think. The man deserves most of that abuse; clearly he did not do his civic duty which was to nullify the case.

Leland says:

You got that right James. You would never see me as a teacher under the rules and garbage they’ve got today.

Leland says:

Okay boys and girls, lets look at this thing from another point of view.

Suppose this juror served on the case of a religious crack pot taking 13-14 year old brides into the “sanctity of a polygamous marriage.” This man and the other 11 jurors found the religious crack pot guilty of multiple counts of statutory rape and child abuse.

Like now, through his own stupidity, his personal information gets out. Now the rest of the flock are harassing him night and day. They stuff his mail box with burning crap, torment his children on the way to school and choke his e-mail with hate filled letters about how he’s going to Hell for his part in the decision.

Most of us would be calling for their heads for harassing this fine upstanding citizen for merely doing his civic duty.

You can’t have it both ways. You either support the jury system or you don’t. The minute we start picking and choosing the laws we choose to follow or even support, our society will fall. If you don’t like the laws, run for office and change them.

This juror was mislead by pathetic defense, an over zealous prosecution and a profound lack of computer knowledge. If you want to nail anyone to a cross over this profound miscarriage of justice, go after the prosecution side and the judge. Just be thankful the judge refused to allow the expert witness to state his entire case because she will walk on that one fact alone.

Harassing some dim-wit that answered a be-there-or-be-square jury summons is useless and makes our side of the argument look pretty bad.

tommy says:

if you ask me this all seems to stem from the predatory nature of the business of law in this country. it seems that some people will sue anybody over anything. lawyers who will participate in this kind of crap have no ethics; they just want to score another win.

and you wanna bet that all these kids who are supposedly damaged for life are left alone with their televisions and first-person shooter games for hours on-end on a daily basis? the ones who aren’t have probably found their parents’ nudie magazines or seen them someplace before. then you’re gonna tell me that seeing a postage stamp-sized naked boob is going to damage these kids for life?

this lawsuit being filed in the first place sets a horrible example for the kids they’re allegedly trying to protect.

no matter how any juror voted on it. nobody *deserves* to be harassed; it’s childish and unlawful. anyone taking part in that harassment is more deserving of punishment than it would seem this teacher is, but that’s for a different lawsuit.

don’t forget that the juror presumably was chosen, probably in part based on the qualities of his character which the led him to his decision.

bearded rooster says:

Fred F. crucifies her because she was too ignorant to figure out how the computer works.

Then is shocked, SHOCKED to discover that he is too ignorant to figure out how public posting of email addresses work.

The words “rhymes with midiot” come to mind.

tommy says:

this is as the others have made clear, a case which shines a bright spotlight on our flawed judicial process. taking it out on this, or any, juror, isn’t fair in that it steals focus from the real problem:

a jury of her *peers* would not have convicted her. the jury was chosen poorly. whose fault is THAT?

Fred F. clearly didn’t have a deep enough understanding of the defendant’s circumstances, and so was a poor choice for the jury. The prosecution, as they should be expected to, took advantage of this, and did their job. this is how the system works.

as leland said: If you don’t like the laws, run for office and change them.

Fred’s not the only one who voted. it takes the jury, not just one juror, and it takes a good prosecution, and a poor defense, to get what we see here. or it takes a blatantly guilty defendant. based on what i’ve seen, the latter was not the case.

whether or not he’s an idiot, i think the focus should now be on the case, not on the juror. focus on the juror is not out of line for the purposes of bringing the case to light, but harassment *is* out of line and inappropriate (and childish, and unlawful!). and so if shame is to be dealt, the shame should be directed at the harassers.

if andrew hadn’t connected the dots here, others would have (and probably have) in some other space. shaming andrew or yourself for putting it out there, or wallowing in that shame, is also a distraction. this is a public, open-forum discussion on andrew’s blog, and the information about Fred F., no matter who published it first, was given freely, by him, out of the same ignorance which influenced his decision in the case.

No name says:

One thing missing from this discussion is:

The very reason a jury decides is to let her “peers” (ordinary upstanding citizens, who only have their sense of justice to go by) decide, rather than a trained jurist, who may not really care or otherwise be tyrannical.

Absolving the jury does not work. The jurors are the only ones responsible for the decision. If they were confused about any aspect of the law or facts of the case, they can ask as many questions as they want during their deliberations. If the interpretation of the law by the judge was wrong, this is easily fixed in an appeal. However, for Fred … to basically imply in his email that she deserves a long jail term for basically being computer illiterate is a callous injustice, and really a sad reflection on the defendant’s “peers”.

In other words, yes the prosecution may have been overzealous, the defense may have been incomptent, the judge may have been unclear. However! the very reason we have a jury of ordinary persons is NOT to technically analyze the case, or to have any comptence in legal theory or the circumstances of the case, but to ensure the decision is not a gross injustice. They have miserably failed in that. They deserve the most emphatic censure of THEIR “peers”.

holier than thou says:

But is it not the case the the jurors are screened and selected from a pool of their “peers”? All jurors are not the same, and if all the jurors are “peers” of Fred, well, then it would seem the “professionals” in this case are to blame.

you can’t blame a child for being a child.
you can’t blame a dog for being a dog.
you can’t blame Fred for being Fred.

Idiot or not, “ordinary upstanding citizen” or not, they picked him to do a job he was not competent to do, and on the prosecution’s side, you have to think they picked him *because* he was incompetent. I don’t think you can absolve the jurors either, but they are not the *only* ones to be blamed. The system failed at the hands of bloodthirsty lawyers.

And harassment is totally out of scope, and stupid.

Tony C says:

11th graders aren’t kids…they are young men and women, most of who have had sex before and see porn before. The whole thing is a joke and just the result of some prosecutor, judge, etc wanting to further their careers by putting an innocent person in prison.

I feel no pity for this juror or any of the others if they are harassed. They are part of this injustice and deserve part of the blame.

Steve says:

Oh Boo F*cking Hoo. This Fred guy gets ‘badgered’ a bit while an innocent women could very likely spend the rest of her life in prison? The judge, jury and prosecutor in this case should each be hounded and pursued each and every day for the duration of their lives on this planet.

Leland says:

Hey TonyC, that was seventh grade students at the time.

Mark says:

Fact:

If it was a Mac instead of a Windows PC, none of this would have happened.

The majority of the world made a terrible decision by consigning themselves to the personal computing dark ages (Windows).

This is what you get when you settle; when you pretend “good enough” is acceptable.

Thankfully, the world’s now beginning to correct that mistake. The educated are switching to Macs in droves now. The rest of the greta unwashed sheep will soon follow along in their usual mindless fashion.

sasquatch says:

Mark, you’re off topic, and you’ve missed the point. Pretty typical of Mac fanatics.

Mike says:

“…he’s been badgered by people writing hateful notes attacking him, his *personal* decision of losing weight,…”

If its a personal decision why did he put up a web page about it? When you post a web page that anyone can access you are inviting people to respond to it. If you can’t take the heat stay out of the kitchen. My sympathy is reserved for a woman who foolishly did what she was told. Reading his comments I suspect he made his decision on what he thought he knew, not the testimony he heard.

Audacitor says:

This story and all the others having to do with the Julie Amero case really anger me. I’m one of few people in my community who have any understanding of computers, much less advanced experience and basic programming skills. I help people work with their computers everyday. I know what goes through their minds when I talk with them, and I can clearly see why Amero wouldn’t turn off that computer. The sheer ignorance of the people accusing Amero is staggering. To employ a favorite saying of mine; “It makes me wanna smack ‘em.”

Canuck says:

I am sickened by what I can gather about this case. It is a jumble of misinformation and hysteria. Has anybody thought to prosecute the school administration for dereliction of duty? Who the heck leaves a Windows 98 computer in service in a public classroom full of children, especially with no proper protection on it? If there is anyone at fault here it seems like it is the school administration, not some poor substitute teacher.

Ted says:

Several things jump out right away. First, the defense attorney must have been extremely incompetent. This is an absolute injustice. Second, the school district should be the one to be punished! Any district that does not have proper filters in place to prevent such inappropriate access needs to have their administrators removed. I am a IT person with a school district and would be fired if I allowed an employee to be exposed to this kind of civil action. Lastly, for the person who despises “Mac addicts” I wonder if he/she had served on the jury if you would be as mis-informed as the rest were. I don’t blame the jury for making the decision they did, They had to decide on what the prosecutor told them. I feel sorry that they did not appear to have enough collective personal computer knowledge to make an informed decision. (In all that I have read about this case, nowhere do I see the school district IT person having to explain WHY!)

Kassi says:

I am going to get flamed so hard but you know I just got to say it.

When I first read about this I was kind of outraged, because a little flash of porn winked across a screen before the teacher punched the off button on the monitor and they had to go and make a trial out of it. Then I found out that wasn’t the case, and the porn was on there for a while. Suddenly I had mixed feelings.

Then I read the court transcript. The woman starts her day by shooing away kids from her computer.
Then Porn starts flooding the screen. This happens around 8:30 in the morning. She decides the best way to deal with it is to sit there and click off the screens and shoo any kids who come to sneak a peek. She does this for literally hours without thinking of a better plan. At lunch, she leaves the computer on, leaves the door open, and leaves the room. She does this despite the experience at the start of the day. If kids are hanging out the computers before class starts in the morning, they are probably going to hang around them in at lunch to. She teaches some, sends some email after lunch, and then goes back to clicking pop ups until 2:45.when school gets out.

She then leaves the computer on with porn on the screen. She walks out the room and doesn’t even shut the door even though she knows that the 11,12 and 13 year old kids like to play with the computer when it is unattended. She does all this because “subs are not allowed to touch another teacher’s things without permission” I am sorry, but that is just utter crap. If a 40 year old adult woman is so divorced from reality that she actually thinks that the school would not want her to do things like unplug the computer, cover the computer with a coat, or close the door when she leaves despite the fact that porn is flashing on the screen, the last place she should be is in our schools.

I am sorry, but I am glad this woman’s career is over, she should not have been put in such a position in the first place. I do not understand how someone could defend such incompetence, much less so many.

Andrew says:

Oh, I don’t think you deserve to be flamed, Kassi — you bring up some very good points. Although I wouldn’t say she was “divorced from reality,” I think it’s obvious (or at least arguable) that she could have handled things differently.

I think we differ in a couple of places, though. For one, I don’t make the leap from “She should have done things differently” to “She should be convicted of a felony and potentially serve 40 years in prison.” (Even without that much prison time, a felony conviction is pretty much life-destroying. I don’t think what she did deserves that.)

The other thing we differ on — possibly — is what the responsibility of the school was here. She was arrested for failing to block the kids from seeing a little porn. But that porn was there in the first place due to the obvious, and I think unarguable, negligence of the school. The school didn’t bother to renew its blocking software. The school didn’t bother to install anti-virus or anti-adware products (both of which are available free).

If someone releases the brake of a car on the hill, and Julie Amero doesn’t do enough to get the kids out of the way, should whomever released the brake bear the brunt of the responsibility?

Most importantly, thanks for taking the time to write. I appreciate opposing views, especially when they’re well-written and well-thought out.

Andrew says:

Oh, one more thing. Kassi took the time to read the transcripts. For others looking to do the same, they’re here. (Warning: 100+ MB PDF)

The IT guy’s name is Robert Hartz; his testimony begins on page 60.

Tom says:

It’s my view that, being not so computer literate, she panicked when the pop-ups displayed. Period.
Many argeu that she should have tirned off the monitor, etc.

People have gotten killed by being run-over by cars whose accelerators got stuck due to mechanical defects. Did any of these drivers get locked up because they didn’t turn off the ignition, or put the car in neutral when it happened?

As a substitute teacher, I will no longer allow the use of PCs in any study halls that I find myself in.

bonica_babe says:

We have a system for deciding what teachers should and should not know. We create job descriptions of the skills necessary to be hired into a position, and we do in service training for additional skills.

We have rules and procedures in schools intended to keep kids safe and make a wholesome learning experience.

1. You don’t hire a person without computer skills, fail to identify it as a critical piece of education for a SUBSTITUTE teacher, and then take them to court, find them guilty, and send them for jail for not having a skill you DIDN’T IDENTIFY AND SCREEN FOR in the first place!

2. You don’t hold a substitute responsible for not being conversant in protocols that the school NEVER CREATED but now seem like a great idea. You also don’t hold a person, especially effectively a temporary employee, responsible for events that occur as a result of the negligence of the school’s administration and employees.

malignedtruth says:

Point of great importance: The regular male teacher turned on the computer while Julie, 4 months pregnant, went to the ladies room before class. When she got back, he had left, instead of waiting to be relieved of duty by her. Two Seventh Grade girls were on a hair salon website, that is a proven source of trojans, pop-up blitzes for postage stamp porn advertisement pop-ups.

Instructions to Julie Amero were that the computer could NOT be turned off, because it logged to the servor all time the classroom was in attendance, for Federal School Funding. Being a noob, she dashed to the teacher lounge and begged for help, and the person there stated it was nothing big, happened all the time to all the teachers, but, the Principal would be notified and send help. That ‘Help’ never happened!

The Federal CIPA was VIOLATED and the IT staff and School Administrators should have all been sacked! The did NOT secure the system, nor invoke firewalls, nor install or update spyware protection!

Detective Lounsbury was on desk duty since he and his now fired partner, David, had been on stakeout in the “Police Party Van” with a minor female, whom they plied with liquor, and convinced to pose nude for their camera. The full training as a computer ‘expert’ consisted of two hours on the phone with someone, most possibly the receptionist, at ComputerCop Software Company, and two weeks monitoring the FBI Identity Theft class.

The 9th District Superior Court Judge, Barbara Strackbein, is reported to have slept through some testimony, failed to adequately address the eye witness account of jurors discussing the case out in public restaurants at lunch, and upheld a Prosecutor’s motion to disallow any Defence testimony by their certified computer expert and analyst, Mr. Horner. The motion was that the Defence attorney had not presented the evidence in time for the prosecuter to review it.

Judge Strackbein had instructed the jury to find a verdict by Friday, as she had weekend plans and the trial had started on Tuesday? She should have erred on the side of proprietary conscience and had a recess while the Prosecuter read the defence expert’s testimony. Talk about being railroaded!

There are many such cases of coaches, teachers, and even other students being blamed in a similar fashion for pop-up porn blitzes! To avoid ZOMBIES all our Private Schools run Fedora Core, or Mepis, behind an IPCOP firewall, with Dan’s Guardian. http://ipcop.org All are FREE to DownLoad!

Randy says:

Whoa! Did I accidentally step into RandomIncoherentConspiracyRamblings.com here? Where did all that come from? It looks like some of the email spam I’ve been getting lately.

Wanttocry says:

Regarding both the innocent and the juror.. what ever happened to “must be proven beyond reasonable doubt” Or even better said.. “Are you Absolutely Certain with little doubt?”

1). Wasn’t it clear in the trial that she had absolutely no idea what to do? I mean she did have a defence lawyer right? Isn’t this enough for reasonable doubt? When you consider the punnishment vs the crime wouldn’t reasonable doubt way in a bit more liberal in this case? I mean I wouldn’t want to take even a 1% chance that as a Juror I was wrong in this case if it meant putting someone in jail for 40 years because she doesn’t know how to click off a monitor.

2). Is it reasonable doubt to say that a juror couldn’t find reasonable doubt in this case? Humm.. Food for big fat thought!