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.
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