Julie Amero: New Trial on the way

Breaking news...from Norwich Bulliten:

"NEW LONDON - Judge Hillary Strackbein this morning granted a motion for a new trial for Julie Amero. The judge's decision is based on evidence that shows some of the computer evidence shown at court was inaccurate. A new trial date has not been set. Amero has entered a not guilty plea."

As expected, the judge presiding over the Julie Amero trial has decided a new trial is the way forward. This would suggest the whole thing is going to be then speedily dismissed. It also possibly means those who screwed up the first time round don't have to stand accountable for their actions, but oh well.

Some more notable quotables from Courant.com:

"In setting aside the guilty verdict, Strackbein ruled that the witness the state presented as a computer expert, a Norwich police detective, provided "erroneous" testimony about the classroom computer.

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

...can you say, "whoops"? The following is also important, for obvious reasons:

"Assistant State's Attorney David Smith argued then that the evidence was "clear cut" that Amero was at fault because she caused the pornography to appear on the computer.

But today, Smith said state would take no position on Dow's motion for a new trial, making it unlikely she will be tried again. Smith also acknowledged that erroneous information about the computer was presented during trial."

That's got to be good news, right? Finally, here's a great picture from The Day.com. I'd love to do a whole "hooray for everything" closing paragraph, but given everything that's happened to Julie Amero because of this I see no reason to clap my hands and cheer wildly. In all likelihood, this will fade out as quickly and quietly as possible for Norwich so that nobody is left looking embarrassed - but that doesn't change the fact that Julie Amero took some serious crossfire in the process.

The important thing to remember here is that someone's life was pretty much destroyed because of some Spyware and Adware - infection files that (let's not forget) were pretty low down on the "danger scale", yet still managed to stir up the biggest shitstorm I've seen in some time.

If you ask me, that's as good a reason as any to resolutely refuse the current trend of Adware and Spyware makers insisting they now "do now harm".

The simple fact is, if you pop up adverts of any description onto a PC, then you pose a very real and present threat. Not to the PC, but to the lives of the individuals witnessing those adverts. A while ago, I wrote this:

"Check out Marketscore and New.net. Not a spectacular score, threat wise - there's plenty of things out there with a bigger, badder bite. Yet in some strange way, both of these two have been tangled up in the Julie Amero case (according to the details filtering out from the ongoing case, they were both present on the infected PC spawning the popups) and she faces anything up to forty years in jail because of some fairly generic, otherwise harmless porn adverts.

My question is, do we need to start applying a "real world" danger ranking to Adware and Spyware? And if so, what other possible score could we give than the equivalent of "10 - Extremely Dangerous"? If any and all Adware can now be used to lever a situation where someone could face jail time, what other response could we have?"

...I think this is needed sooner rather than later.