Julie Amero Update: March 16

Does anyone know what happened to the computer. Chain of custody is extremely important in these types of cases and any break in it would be grounds for acquittal.

Karoli,

Thank you. Maybe you could set up a gathering out there on the same date as the sentencing (and anyone else, wherever concerned people may be) that the media might pick up?

By the way, does anyone out there know Julie personally who can tell us how she is? How her spirits are? And how her defense fund is coming along? (I don't consider my donation to be limited to her defense fund. I don't know about anyone else, but as far as I'm concerned, she can use my contribution for anything she wants - defense first if she chooses and if anything is left over, enjoy life. She's earned it.)

Karoli,

Excellent. Thanks.

I haven't seen an email from you yet but hopefully that's because you haven't written/sent it yet. (Or has my spam defense hidden it?)

My earlier thoughts on licensing/copyright of these transcript versions is in a comment I appended to the SFX blog entry I linked earlier, but I'd like to know what your understanding is of copyright of the NB version, your version, and the upcoming SFX version, of the transcript.

TIA,

love, raiph

raiph,

I'll send you an email about this too, but the short answer is that what you want to do is fine.

lilaw, I wish I could be there -- it's just a bit too far to get to from California but rest assured I will be there in spirit, and I will blog your comment as a call to anyone who can be there to be there.

tate,

This was a computer on a school district network where the IT admin allowed the school content filter to lapse several weeks before. According to experts in the case, malware was present weeks before Amero ever arrived in the classroom that morning.

I am not sure what the EFF stance on this is. :)

In pursuing my Julie Amero Spread Firefox project (see http://www.spreadfirefox.com/node/27020), your amero-text.zip caught my attention.

I am trying to find or put together a better version of the trial transcript by the end of this week. Specifically, a text version rather than an image version.

As I'm sure you know, the Norwich Bulletin version is a series of PDFs (41!) that contain images. Fairly clean ones, but images nonetheless.

Your version is also a series of PDFs (3), but the pages I looked at contain real text, which is what I'm looking for. But the text has bizarre character formatting (odd changes of bold, italic, gray color, etc.). Did you create your PDFs from the Norwich Bulletin PDFs? Why is the formatting bizarre? Do you mind if Spread Firefox starts with your version and cleans it up and then publishes it on, say, WikiSource (a sister project to Wikipedia) with credit to you and Spread Firefox?

The sure fire way to catch the culprit would be to subpoena the porn site on the pc and have them check their internet logs or the isp.. then it could be known without "a shadow of a doubt" when and where the site was accessed.

not rocket science

it = is a few times.. my bad

1. other employee, janitor etc.. could have opened a porn email after hours.

2. Computer could have been hacked

3. Students could have looked at a porn site as a joke while the teacher was out.

4. Was Norton updated?

5. It there anti-spyware tools installed on the system?

6. Are the flash drives enabled? It could have been a deliberate attempt to slander.

7. What do the security logs say? or were they not active, (lame group policy).

8. Who owns the pc?

9. What software was recently installed on the system.. and was is microsoft certified?

10. Ive gone to sites and had this happen to my pc in the past that were not porn related. And so have other many die hard internet users.

11. It this pc connected to a wireless network. Its easy to hack wep, but not wpa if you have a hardcore password (no pun intended).

12. The teacher is always right! 99.999 percent of the time. And if these questions dont add up for conviction... theres no way there is not reasonable doubt.

Case closed, next.

Where's the EFF (dot org) on this?

I have read all the articles about Julie Amero. I have read all of the expert analyses. I have read the hundreds of comments from America and from around the world. I have read the entire transcript of Julie’s “trial”. I have read the vague and inartfully drawn statute under which Julie was convicted as well as its legislative history and some of the decisions construing it. (The appellate courts of Connecticut have had trouble with the vagueness of this statute – a statute certainly not written for a case like this one – finding the statute to be constitutional only with proper, clear, curative instructions to the jury from the Court, something that, in my view, was lacking here.) There is no need for me to here “preach to the choir” of my belief in Julie’s innocence or of the confluence of ignorance, incompetence and apparent malice and/or hysteria that convicted her. Like many of you, I have made my contribution to Julie’s defense fund and have emailed or written to the news outlets, my friends and colleagues, government officials and others. More must be done. It’s been over 40 years since I marched down Massachusetts Avenue and assembled in peaceful protest with hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of others in Cambridge Commons in opposition to misguided conduct by the government of that era. Then, we protested, among other things, the sacrifice of thousands of innocent young people – my then contemporaries – to a different kind of ignorance. Eventually, mainstream America took notice of our protests. Now, we must protest the sacrifice of one innocent to a different ignorance remembering that “[a]n injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere.” (Martin Luther King). While some of us, young and old[er], with enough computer savvy to access a blog, are painfully aware of this current injustice to Julie Amero, mainstream America and mainstream Connecticut are not aware of it or of its threat to their liberty. Most of mainstream America gets its information from television and the print media. And that media publicizes the news that sells commercial airtime or print advertisements. Let’s provide them with something to publicize. At least, let’s let Norwich know that we are watching. (I think that peaceful protest and freedom of assembly and association are still permitted there.) Let’s let Julie know that we support her. I do not live in Connecticut. It will take me at least three hours to get there, but I will be in Norwich on Julie’s sentencing date, now scheduled for March 29, 2007. Please get up from your computer and join me. You computer geeks (a term I use with respect) who are far more blog-savvy than I, please get the word out. While I would like to be in the courtroom to observe the proceedings on March 29th, nothing would please me more than to find that the place is so crowded with Julie’s supporters that I can’t get in. By the way, I am not some left-wing radical. I am now a moderate, middle-aged part of mainstream America. I am outraged. I am also an attorney. I am alarmed. And ashamed.

Usually a Motion for Judgment of Acquittal notwithstanding the verdict is made right after the jury announces its verdict. It's possible that the attorney file some sort of other motion to ask the court to enter a judgment of acquittal, but I doubt it. It would have to be taken up on appeal.