After weeks of e-mails and bad press discrediting the District Attorney's prosecution of the case, the tide may be turning for So-called porn pop-up teacher Julie Amero. According to Hartford Courant reporter Rick Green the DA may be thinking about backing down from his shameless attack on Amero, her character and her livelihood. District Attorney Smith is quoted as saying that things "could very well change" between now and Thursday's sentencing, which in the worst case could see Amero headed to prison for 40 years. Sources close to the case say that officials are looking for a way to avoid the sentencing hearing altogether, and that the state's attorney's office in Norwich is "reconsidering it's aggressive approach."

All this while the Norwich Bulletin publishes yet another boneheaded editorial in which a nameless pundit with an obvious bias opines on Amero's fate and the reasons why she deserved to have her life ruined through court battles and public shame. Against all logic, reason and testimony the op-ed attempts to pull together a convincing tale to discredit every single computer expert who has looked at the facts in this case. Some say small time print journalism is almost dead; Frankly I'm anxiously awaiting the day I can dance on the grave of the Norwich Bulletin and it's pseudo-journalistic witch-hunting ways.

Amero's sentencing is scheduled for March 29th and you can bet your malware infected, unpatched Windows 98 machine that we'll be following developments in this case as closely as possible.

See Also:
Conn. Profs urge deeper investigation in porn-pop-up case
Julie Amero sentencing postponed, Norwich "expert" speaks
Porn pop-up teacher gets new attorney, PC World outs juror
Malware victim faces jailtime; Write Connecticut's Governor

Julie Amero, the substitute school teacher convicted of being an internet n00b in a classroom with a severely outdated and unmaintained computer has had a brief, non-permanent reprieve from her sentencing on four felony counts. The hearing to decide her fate, which could see her spending up to 40 years in prison, was postponed until March 29th. The Norwich-Bulletin does its typically biased job of updating events in the case, and reminds us, "forensic investigation of the computer used that day revealed she was actively surfing the sites nearly the entire school day."

According to reports however, the Norwich Police's only "computer expert" Mark Lounsbury has little if any IT training, and relied primarily on his free "certification" on the ComputerCop Pro software, and the reports which it generates. The big issue: ComputerCop Pro is incapable of determining whether the URLs opened by Internet Explorer 5 were the result of human action, or of programmatic control through spyware or malware. Nevertheless, Amero was convicted on the back of testimony offered by Lounsbury.

Lounsbury has himself admitted to criminal activity in the past. In 2001 Detective Lounsbury admitted to drinking alcohol while driving a minor child in a police vehicle while involved in an underage drinking sting operation. He was never charged, and as far as searchable records show, the investigation essentially died a quiet death, leaving Detective Lousbury in his position as the chief investigator of computer crimes involving children for the Norwich Police Department.