Perversion of Justice

If you had any doubt that prosecutors in this country have too much power and use it indiscriminately, you should check out this article in today’s Times. Briefly, a substitute teacher in Norwich Connecticut is facing 40, (yes 40) years in prison after she was convicted of inadvertently exposing her students to pornographic pop-ups when she couldn’t figure out how to turn off the classroom computer which was apparently infested with spyware. Is Connecticut truly such a backward place that a jury of 12 citizens is willing to send this teacher to prison for the rest of her natural life for being a Luddite? And what of the district attorney’s office who took this case to trial? They offered her a plea which carried no jail time, which she rightly refused. A clearer abuse of prosecutorial discretion is hard to find. Unfortunately her lawyer seemed not too bright either insofar as he failed to disclose his expert witness’s testimony prior to trial; an oversight which led to the judge suppressing most of his testimony. I sincerely hope that this poor woman’s appeal is successful. The violence emanating from Iraq every night, viewed on network television, is in my opinion far more damaging to “the children” than any porno pop-up.