The scheduled sentencing for Julie Amero, the former Connecticut middle school teacher found guilty of exposing her students to internet pornography pop-ups, was pushed back again today — this time to May 18.
The 40-year-old Windham, Conn. woman faces up to 40 years in prison, a decade for each count of risk of injury to a minor for which she was convicted. Her sentencing had been scheduled for Thursday, following another postponement.
Officials at the Norwich Superior Court did not immediately say why the sentencing was postponed or who requested the delay, according to a report today in the Norwich Bulletin.
The information security community is keeping a close eye on the Amero proceedings after many have claimed the woman was a victim of spyware and an undereducated judicial system.
Amero – who considers herself a poor computer user – has argued the images kept popping up and couldn’t be clicked off, the result of badware installed on the class computer, which was running expired anti-spyware solutions and the Windows 98 operating system.
But the prosecution contended Amero clicked on the graphic websites and did not prevent the students from seeing the images by simply turning off the computer.
Security adviser Bob Johnston speculated on his Associated Services for Computing blog today that the postponement may be due to the fact that the state is involved in another high-profile case. Michael Skakel, a Kennedy cousin who was convicted in 2002 of killing 15-year-old Martha Moxley in 1975, is petitioning for a retrial.
