Garbage Data Too Easily Admissible

The Julie Amero case teaches a necessary lesson: Courts have yet to acquire the means to deal reliably with computer-generated evidence.

The Norwich substitute teacher was granted a new trial June 6, effectively erasing her conviction on four counts of risk of injury to a minor. New London Superior Court Judge Hillary Strackbein approved Amero's request for a new trial when it became apparent that police testimony about the computer images was wrong.

Put in more graphic terms: Flawed testimony from a police detective with no real expertise in computer technology led to the conviction of a woman who most likely committed no crime.

Amero was convicted of risk of injury to a minor for permitting students in a Norwich school to view pornographic images on a classroom computer. Her defense was that the images had appeared on her screen unbidden, as pop-ups generated by spyware. She neither summoned the images nor caused them to be displayed to students, she claimed.

Had Amero flashed the images intentionally, there is no question that she would be guilty of a crime. She was criticized by some for not simply pulling the computer's plug from the electrical socket once the peep show began.

Judge Strackbein prevented Amero's expert from testifying at trial about how the images appeared. It turns out trial counsel did not disclose the witness in a timely manner. The new trial petition moots the inevitable habeas corpus petition for ineffective assistance of counsel.

On review of the evidence post-verdict, the state police crime lab determined the Norwich police detective's testimony about the computer-generated images was flawed. How many times has this detective testified before about computers?

I am reminded of a case I tried years ago. The defendant's name is Al Swinton. He is now doing 60 years for murder.

The case turned on the matching of dental impressions to bite marks on the corpse of a young woman. When the forensic odontologist testified about how computer-enhanced images matched the bite marks, I objected. The dentist had no idea how the computer manipulated the images. Neither did the state police officer who testified. The trial court permitted the evidence to be admitted.

Years later, after a brilliant appellate brief by James Streeto, the state Supreme Court found it was error to admit that evidence. But, as is so often the case in such matters, the court held the error was harmless. I still wonder whether Swinton would have been convicted absent the voodoo technology.

A similar issue arose not long ago in a case I tried against John Danaher, now the state's public safety commissioner. An FBI agent with a fine arts background testified about computer-enhanced images of a hat band that the federal government used to link my client to the robbery of a jewelry store. The agent's testimony about digital manipulation of images came down to this: it is reliable because we use it all the time.

Chief Justice Chase Rogers is reaching out far and wide to tap lawyers and judges to sit on committees for all manner of things. How about a committee on evidentiary standards for computer-generated evidence? The bar is ignorant. And innocent people are getting hurt. Just ask Julie Amero.

Reprinted with permission of The Connecticut Law Tribune.

Comments

[Mark]

And once the evidence is admitted, a public that learns its own information about computers and especially computer-enhanced images from television believes you can enhance an image to show information that cannot physically be present in the image.

[AntonK]

This whole prosecution is absolutely ludicrous. On its face, and while not literally impossible, the notion that she sat there in a classroom checking out the hardcore porn is silly.

This is almost certainly a malware/browser hijack issue. Any rank-amateur computer hobbyist would’ve been able to discover the malware/browswer hijacker causing the porn popups with a few simple and free anti-malware/spyware tools. I’ve done it dozens and dozens of times myself on friend’s and work computers.

So how could this have gotten this far? Do we have a Nifong in Connecticut?

[Fima Fimovich]

I came to US as political refugee on human rights violations in former USSR
I am russian jew, and I got a lot of discrimination in USSR
My parents are Holocaust survivors
But I got the worst thing in USA, never possible in communist country.
I was set up with my computer, convicted as a sex offender for computer p..rn.
Now I do not have job and can hardly survive under police database
supervision, named sex offender registration. Nobody want to hire me,
I think because of police database.
And I have family. Who cares? Dirty polititians are playing their
dirty games for more power.
I would like to send you some links to publications about my criminal
case. I was forced to confess to the
possession of internet digital pictures of porn in deleted clusters of
my computer hard drive. My browser was hijacked while I was browsing
the web. I was redirected to illegal sites against my will. Some
illegal pictures were found on my hard drive, recovering in
unallocated clusters, without dates of file creation/download.

I do not know how courts can widely press these charges on people to
convict them, while the whole Internet is a mess.

This is my story in inquisition21.com. There is all
information about case written by Irish writer Brian
Rothery. You can see a lot of violations of law by police

http://www.inquisition21.com/article~view~7~page_num~3.html

This is publication in Wired news

http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,63391,00.html

[David]

Although this prosecution was absurd, it was vigourously defended by public prosecutors and justice only came into play after sustained public exposure.

Most cases are not exposed to public scrutiny in the same way, yet no questions have been asked about thousands of cases that have been conducted in a similar manner.