WASHINGTON: A US judge has ordered a retrial of a schoolteacher found guilty of computer porn charges after a sustained campaign by internet specialists proclaiming her innocence.
Julie Amero, 40, was convicted in January of causing a series of sex advertisements to pop up on a classroom computer, which were seen by pupils in October 2004. She faces up to 40 years in jail.
But the defence filed a motion for a retrial, and at a sentencing hearing on Wednesday Judge Hillary Strackbein granted the application.
The prosecution at the trial in Connecticut had alleged Amero must have clicked on porn websites for the pop-ups to begin appearing. But after the trial 28 computer science academics in the state sought to prove that the rapid-fire sequence could have appeared automatically.
Sympathetic campaigners argue such pop-ups are one of the scourges of the internet and say she is the victim of a witchhunt.
The computer was sent to a state laboratory after the trial, and Judge Strackbein said its report might contradict evidence presented by the state computer expert, a police detective. "The jury may have relied, at least in part, on that faulty information."
The prosecution did not oppose the defence motion for a retrial. Neither the prosecution nor the jury appear to have been fully aware of the extent to which computers can be infiltrated, especially old ones that do not have firewall protection.
Outside the court Amero said: "A great weight has been lifted off my back."
Her lawyer, William Dow, commended the prosecutors for acting responsibly. "The lesson from this is all of us are subject to the whims of these computers."
Pupils, some of them as young as 12, told police that the computer had been left on for several hours and they had seen men and women engaged in oral sex.
Guardian News & Media
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