According to an article in SecurityFocus,
On January 5, a six-person jury found former Kelly Middle School substitute teacher Julie Amero guilty of four counts of risk of injury to a minor. The charges stem from an October 19, 2004 incident when the computer in the classroom in which Amero was teaching started displaying pornographic pop-up advertisements.
Normally I wouldn’t question a case like this, but there seems to be a lot of doubt as to the technical merits of this trial, coming from some well-known computer security experts.
The case has attracted an enormous amount of interest, because the reported details of the trial appear to indicated that a lack of understanding of the technology involved and not solid digital evidence, led the jury to convict the teacher.
It doesn’t take much experience to know how difficult it is to convey the technical aspects of such a criminal investigation like this, especially to lawyers, judges, and jury members. That’s one big reason computer forensics experts get training to testify in court. I’ll be interested to see if the security guys can make a difference in the verdict, and help prove what really happened.
There’s a good follow up article in USA Today with some more technical detail. Also, the complete transcript from the trial was recently made available.
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