Accused of letting impressionable students see pornographic pictures as she browsed the web in her classroom, former Connecticut school teacher Julie Amero dodged felony charges last Friday by agreeing to plead guilty to a single misdemeanor charge and surrendering her state teaching credentials, according to the Hartford Courant.

But if a soon-to-be released forensic report (.pdf) about her hard drive is accurate, Amero's guilty plea is hardly justice -- since the school computer had adware, the anti-virus software on the computer had been discontinued, and the technical testimony at her trial was amateurish and flawed.

Amero, a substitute teacher in Norwich,Connecticut was arrested after students in her class reported that they'd seen pornographic images on her computer screen on October 19, 2004. Amero said the computer wouldn't stop sending pop-ups and that she didn't know what to do with the computer.

In January 2007, she was convicted of four felony pornography charges and faced up to 40 years in prison.

Computer security experts, including Alex Eckelberry of Sunbelt Software, read about the case and immediately suspected Amero was the victim of rogue software and an overzealous prosecutor. He and a crack team of computer forensic experts examined the hard drive for the defense on a pro-bono basis.

Based on their March 2007 report, the judge in the case set aside the conviction in June 2007 - essentially granting Amero a new trial and raising hopes the prosecution would drop the case.

Posted by Justin Payton in Adware, Spyware and Trojans at 10:28