Via courant.com -
The unbelievable story of Julie Amero concluded quietly Friday afternoon at Superior Court in Norwich, with the state of Connecticut dropping four felony pornography charges.
Amero agreed to plead guilty to a single charge of disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor. Amero, who has been hospitalized and suffers from declining health, also surrendered her teaching license.
"Oh honey, it's over. I feel wonderful," Amero, 41, said a few minutes after accepting the deal where she also had to surrender her teaching license. "The Norwich police made a mistake. It was proven. That makes me feel like I'm on top of the world."
In June of 2007, Judge Hillary B. Strackbein tossed out Amero's conviction on charges that she intentionally caused a stream of "pop-up" pornography on the computer in her classroom and allowed students to view it. Confronted with evidence compiled by forensic computer experts, Strackbein ordered a new trial, saying the conviction was based on "erroneous" and "false information."
But since that dramatic reversal, local officials, police and state prosecutors were unwilling to admit that a mistake may have been made -- even after computer experts from around the country demonstrated that Amero's computer had been infected by "spyware."
New London County State's Attorney Michael Regan told me late Friday the state remained convinced Amero was guilty and was prepared to again go to trial.
"I have no regrets. Things took a course that was unplanned. Unfortunately the computer wasn't examined properly by the Norwich police," Regan said.
"For some reason this case caught the media's attention,'' Regan said.
The case also caught the attention of computer security experts from California to Florida, who read about Amero's conviction on Internet news sites. Recognizing the classic signs of a computer infected by malicious adware, volunteers examined computer records and the hard drive and determined that Amero was not responsible for the pornographic stream on her computer.
The state never conducted a forensic examination of the hard drive and instead relied on the expertise of a Norwich detective, with limited computer experience. Experts working for Amero riduculed the state's evidence, saying it was a classic case of spyware seizing control of the computer. Other experts also said that Amero's response -- she failed to turn off the computer -- was not unusual in cases like this.
Among other things, the security experts found that the Norwich school system had failed to properly update software that would have blocked the pornography in the first place.
"She did not go out searching for porn. She was just stumbling around. She didn't know what the hell she was doing,'' said Alex Eckelberry, a computer software executive from Florida who helped to lead a large group of computer professionals who volunteered to assist Amero.
"All of our forensic investigators felt it was a complete miscarriage. It was clear she was absolutely innocent,'' he said. "The mistakes and misinformation that occurred in that courtroom were astounding."
Late Friday afternoon Amero -- who has been hospitalized for stress and heart problems since the conviction -- told me she planned to spend a quiet weekend in front of the fireplace with her husband.
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Wow, I am very glad this is finally over. When I first heard about this case, Julie Amero was facing up to 40 years in prison. At that point, Julie Amero got a new lawyer and moved to appeal.
Shortly after a jury convicted Amero, fellow blogger and friend, Alex Eckelberry (CEO of Sunbelt Software), made his companies' experts available to the defense on a pro-bono basis for any analysis of the infected machine...to support the appeals process. Then the ball got rolling...and many in the security community were in full support of Julie Amero and the Julie Group developed.
In May 2007, sentencing was postponed...and by June 2007, Julie's defense team was granted a new trial, based on the forensic evidence discovered after the original verdicts.
I am personally thankful for Alex, his team, all of those in the Julie Group and everyone that helped bring us to today's result. Today's result, while not prefect, should be considered a success in the name of truth.
Alex is planning on posting the forensic research over the weekend on the Sunbelt Blog.
Sadly, other cases have been found along the way that require just as much help....
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