About the time I think I’ve written everything I can possibly write about Julie Amero, something else comes up. This latest postponement of her sentencing date has created opportunities for some very interesting articles and interviews.
Rick Green of the Hartford Courant has an excellent column today summarizing possibilities for the ongoing delays. He writes:
Then, a few weeks ago, as Amero faced sentencing, Assistant State’s Attorney David J. Smith filed a startling motion in Superior Court:
“The state has not completed a full examination of all the issues which may affect its position at the sentence hearing.”
Translation: We were wrong. We are trying to figure a CYA way out of this mess.
They still are. Amero’s sentencing Thursday was delayed again until June 6 – the fourth postponement since March. She’s still convicted of four counts of risk of injury to a minor, facing a potential 40 years in jail.
He also did an interview with WTIC News/Talk this morning about possible reasons for the ongoing delays.
As I was listening to the podcast, I was overcome with one thought: Why is it so wrong to just do the right thing? IF the prosecutor went to court and simply said “The verdict should be vacated because evidence exonerating Julie Amero has come to light”, wouldn’t that resolve it? IF the defense attorney said “I was wrong — I didn’t represent her properly when I failed to turn over the expert’s reports to the prosecutor”, wouldn’t that carry weight? If the so-called expert Mark Lounsbury backed down from his false contention that she actually had to click links to arrive at those sites and admitted it, wouldn’t that make a difference?
Our society doesn’t reward elected officials for doing the right thing — it flogs them. We applaud officials for ‘protecting the children’, for ‘putting away the bad guys’, for ‘keeping our streets and schools safe’, but we do not applaud them for stepping up and taking moral responsibility for what they’ve done wrong. As a result, we have a situation where one person is wrongfully convicted, the one truly responsible for the situation has been shielded from blame (the Norwich Schools IT administrator, Robert Hartz), everyone is trying to dodge responsibility and no justice has been done at all.
Perhaps it’s time for us to start encouraging behavior from our officials that includes accepting responsibility for mistakes. As humans, we all make them. Why shouldn’t we applaud when a prosecutor steps up and says “Yes, a wrong needs to be made right, my mistake needs to be corrected.”? They should not have to fear “flip-flopper” and “Swiftboating” ads in their next campaign because they did the right thing, and they should be given the space by their constituents to make mistakes and correct them.
As Rick Green points out in the interview, the prosecutors, police and school district are now in a lose-lose situation. Admitting they had less than a full understanding of the technology leaves them vulnerable to public scorn. Not admitting it means Julie Amero continues to wear the scarlet letter. The school certainly isn’t going to admit their role in this because they don’t want any lawsuits, yet that is EXACTLY where the true blame and criticism should be placed.
What a mess.
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