For the fourth time since the jury returned the guilty verdict, sentencing has been continued. In March, the defense requested a continuance, due to new lawyers being added to the defense. The State has asked for two continuances, both in April. It is unclear who asked for this continuance, or if it was due to Judge Strackbein being reassigned to the New London Superior Court.

Sentencing is now scheduled for June 6, 2007, at the New London Superior Courthouse.

Norwich Bulletin

This was the last witness of the first day of testimony, and was a student in the classroom at the time of the incident. He testified that he remembers October 19, 2004 because a substitute was looking at pornographic “something”. He was cut off by the State’s Attorney before he could finish his sentence. He could not identify Ms. Amero in court… in fact, the only thing he remembers about the sub was that it was a female. The student did testify that Ms. Amero was at the computer almost the entire class period, and that “she was on the websites scrolling up and down”.
I’m curious as to why the Prosecution put this witness on the stand. Not only did he really not say anything that we did not already know, but he left me with more questions than answers, and confusion over some of his testimony.
The first thing that needed to be answered is how did he know the images were pornographic. How many 12 or 13 year olds can really, honestly distinguish an image from a pornographic site from, let’s say, the Victoria’s Secret website? My guess would be that some of the girls in the class would be able to tell, but none of the boys would know the difference.
Another issue is the distance he was from the monitor. He testified that he sat on a diagonal from the monitor, five or six feet away. So we can assume he has limited visibility of what is on the monitor. But we don’t have to assume for long, since he then says that he could see a little bit of the monitor at an angle. When you look at an angle, the colors skew, and at times you cannot even tell what you are looking at. This is sitting right in front of it, so imagine being five feet away.
Her scrolling could have been her looking at clothes. Remember that she was pregnant at the time of the incident. If she was comparing materials, patterns, prices, etc. then it is very likely that she was doing a lot of scrolling. The student was unable to testify as to what sites Ms. Amero was on… he did testify that he did not see the names of the sites that she was on.
There is the possibility of this student’s recollection of events being tainted. Before he spoke with police about the case, he spoke with the principle, as did other students, and then all the students that met with the principle talked among themselves, again before talking with the police.
Basically, we can reasonably say that he really has no idea what was on the monitor, and was more than likely unable to differentiate images from a pornographic site and an image from Victoria’s Secret at all, let alone from the five feet away on an angle. A witness that leaves nothing but questions and concerns.
Transcript

So I finally finished finals on Thursday, and went home that night, since I don’t live very far. Now I have about a month before I start my summer classes, Physics 110 and Information Systems Management 101. I still need to buy the books for them, hopefully it won’t cost too much.

So what do I have planned to do until them? I think I’m working for the same guy I worked with last year. I have a website to do for a guy my dad works with. Sentencing in the Amero case is in seven days, so I need to finish summarizing the transcript. The court that she will be sentenced in is about an hour drive from here, so I might go to the sentencing. I also am in the middle of another web project, one you (my readers, whoever you are) will be seeing once its done.

On a separate note, I want to know who my readers are. Go ahead and leave comments, they will appear as soon as you submit them (unless Askimet thinks they’re spam), in which case they will appear once I approve them. Also let me know which browser you use to access the site (the stats package I use shows Opera as the one used most often on the site, and I want to see if its just me).

And just to throw some more random stats into this post, the second most popular browser to view this site is Internet Explorer. For those of you that use Internet Explorer, please consider switching to Firefox. It is safer than Internet Explorer, easier to use in my opinion, and has some features that are not in Internet Explorer. It is open source, and when problems with it are identified (problems that don’t appear that often), they are fixed quickly.

And for the 17.6% of visitors that are already using Firefox, thanks. Now just make sure you use an up to date anti-virus program, don’t open attachments from people you don’t know/aren’t expecting, and surf safely, and the risk of your computer getting infected drops considerably.

10) You can never have enough socks and underwear, these things are crucial to everyday living

9) Bottled water is a must

germ x is always needed, and you will become a germophobe

7) If you go to class you will get a better grade.

6) don’t ever open your books, because you will find out that they are not always needed

5) Math is somthing that you need to understand before going to college…

4) The food sucks

3) most people are faggots

2) How facebook would control your life, and keep you from doing school work

1) I wish I knew that girls can never be trusted and should be shot..

peace

Back in the beginning of the year, I started a new site for legal, technical, political, and similar issues. Unfortunatly, I do not have the time to continue posting on it. So…I’m taking it down for the time being. I hope to be able to bring it back someday, but I’d rather not have another site to have to monitor for spam and keep updated.

So for now, anyone going there will be redirected to this post. Once I have the time to commit to another site, I will bring it back, remove the redirection, and make a new post about it here.