Julie Amero, a 40-year-old substitute teacher in Norwich, Connecticut, is facing up to 40 years in prison for exposing children to internet pornography. She has been convicted of impairing the morals of a child and risking injury to a minor by exposing as many as ten seventh-grade students to porn sites.

The incident happened in October 19, 2004. Amero was a substitute teacher for a seventh-grade language class at Kelly Middle School. A few students were crowded around a PC; some were giggling. She investigated and saw the kids looking at a barrage of graphic, hard-core pornographic pop-ups.

The prosecution contended that Amero had used the computer to visit porn sites. However, the defense said that wasn’t true and argued that the machine was infested with spyware and malware, and that opening the browser caused the computer to go into an endless loop of pop-ups leading to porn sites. Amero’s lawyer argued that the teacher hit a hair-styling website, resulting in spyware infection, which in turn “led to this pornographic loop that was out of control.”

The jury didn’t buy it, and the teacher now faces up to forty years in prison after being found guilty on four counts of impairing the morals of a child. Whether she did it or not (and it’s really not clear from the skimpy computer forensic detail provided by the article), forty years seems excessive. Despite her conviction, the number of acquittals this defense has seen means your odds are still pretty good if you want to blame your next big heist on your crappy firewall.

So if you face a pop-up that wouldn’t go away and it leads you to the porno webs, you better be careful!