The courts in Norwich, Connecticut, have been dealing with the big crimes lately. A jury there found substitute teacher, Julie Amero, guilty of risk of injury to a minor, or impairing the morals of a child. She faces up to 40 years in jail for this - sentencing is yet to occur.

Her crime was to have a classroom computer which displayed some pornographic images to grade 7 students. The defence claimed this was the result of popups from a spyware infection, but the police and jury weren’t buying this. Haven’t they ever heard of the crapfulness of Internet Explorer and all its security flaws?

Obviously there is no actual crime in Norwich, as the police, prosecutor and court have nothing better to do than investigate and then try a case like this. So the taxpayers there might save themselves some taxes by getting rid of these things they clearly don’t need. I’m just staggered that the police and then the lawyers just didn’t laugh at this complaint and tell the complainant to piss off.

Now I know she won’t get 40 years, but that she even faces the prospect is just crazy. Anywhere else in civilisation, this would have been handled as an internal employment issue and her worst case is getting fired. Shouldn’t even come to anything based on what I’ve read.

Update (07/06/2007): Some sense has come into this … she has been granted a new trial. Better still would have been dismissal of the charges, but its better than nothing I suppose. Still those Connecticut courts and lawyers mustn’t have too much in the way of crime to deal with to continue wasting time on non-events like this.

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