US Teacher Faces Retrial Over Web Porn in Class

A Connecticut judge today ordered a retrial of a schoolteacher found guilty on computer pornography charges after a sustained campaign by internet specialists proclaiming her innocence.

Julie Amero, 40, was found guilty in January of being responsible for a series of sex advertisements that popped up on a classroom computer and were seen by pupils.

The prosecution had claimed she would have had to click on the websites for the adverts to begin appearing.

After the trial, 28 computer science academics in Connecticut sought to prove the rapid-fire sequence of pop-up sex advertisements could have appeared automatically.

Sympathetic campaigners argue such pop-ups are one of the scourges of the internet and claim she is the victim of a hysterical witch-hunt.

Ms Amero appeared in court today for sentencing on charges that carry a 40-year jail sentence. But Judge Hillary Strackbein told the court in New London that she was ordering a retrial.

The computer was sent to a state laboratory after the trial, and Judge Strackbein said the lab report could contradict evidence presented by the state computer expert, a police detective.

"The jury may have relied, at least in part, on that faulty information," she said.

The prosecution service, in the face of the nationwide campaign, backed off and did not oppose the defence motion for 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 as used by the school which do not have 'firewall' protection.

Outside the court, Ms 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," he said.

Ms Amero, who lives in Windham and was pregnant at the time of the incident on October 19 2004, was a supply teacher at the Kew Middle School, Norwich, Connecticut. She denied clicking on the sex websites.

The defence argued the computer was used by pupils while she was out of the class, and that, on her return, the screen began showing the sex scenes.

Pupils, some of whom had been as young as 12, told the police the computer was left on for several hours and they had seen men and women engaged in oral sex.

The prosecution said she was too slow to close the computer down, though she argued she had been told by another teacher, earlier in the day, that the computer had to be left on. She was found guilty on four counts of risk of injury to a minor or impairing the morals of a child.

During the trial, the assistant state attorney, David Smith, questioned the feasibility of pop-ups randomly appearing over and over during the course of the day.

He said: "For the sake of argument, if the pop-ups had occurred, what did she have to do to stop that? Quite frankly, she could have turned off the computer."