The Knucklehead of the Day award

Today's winner is New London County(CT) State Attorney Michael Regan. He gets the award for the following-

Almost 18 months after a pornography conviction that could have sent her to jail for 40 years was thrown out, former Norwich substitute teacher Julie Amero plead guilty to a single charge of disorderly conduct Friday afternoon.

The plea deal before Superior Court Judge Robert E. Young in Norwich ends a long-running drama that attracted attention from around the world.

"Oh honey, it's over. I feel wonderful," Amero said a few minutes after pleading guilty to disorderly conduct and agreeing to surrender her teaching license. She had originally been charged with 10 counts of risk of injury to a minor and later convicted on four of them.

"The Norwich police made a mistake. It was proven. That makes me feel like I'm on top of the world."

In June of 2007, Judge Hillary B. Strackbein tossed out Amero's conviction on charges that she intentionally caused a stream of "pop-up" pornography on the computer in her classroom and allowed students to view it.

Confronted with evidence compiled by forensic computer experts, Strackbein ordered a new trial, saying the conviction was based on "erroneous" and "false information."

Friday, New London County State's Attorney Michael Regan said the state was prepared to go to trial again, but because of Amero's ill health agreed to the reduce the felony charges to a single misdemeanor.

Reducing the charge to a misdemeanor is a joke as was the whole prosecution of Julie Amero. Kevin wrote about this miscarriage of justice over a year ago.

A comment on conviction of Norwich, Connecticut substitute teacher Julie Amero who faces up to 40 years in prison after being convicted of exposing seventh-grade students to pornographic images on a school PC. Sunbelt Software president Alex Eckelberry has been debunking the prosecutor's case, and has put his money where his mouth is for extra forensic examination. Anyone who's ever seen a good old fashion spyware/malware infested Windows 98 PC knows that this is a real travesty...

I'm not terribly computer literate, but know how vulnerable Windows operating systems are to spyware. Apparently no one at a prosecutor's office knows that or they are just too lazy to find out. In the process an innocent person's life was ruined, and this is why I name New London County(CT) State Attorney Michael Regan today's Knucklehead of the Day.

Hat tip- Walter at Overlawyered