I think that covers it. I'm leaning towards 3, though to be fair, that would imply 1. Here is my reasoning: Topedia mentioned that the 'reCAPTCHA Form plugin' also had the same issue. However, I have not, and clearly many others have not either, so this would mean that something about the environment, probably client side, is breaking the reCAPTCHA.
However, I find it odd that something like reCAPTCHA, more a security tool than anything else, does not break gracefully. This is why I say 1 is also likely: The how-to on Google's site says that checking "if(!$resp->is_valid)" is sufficient to test for a valid response. If my plugin is sending an e-mail, it is only because this expression evaluated to 'true'. At the very least, their tutorial does not cover all cases, since clearly this is evaluating to 'true' with garbage / broken scripts. Maybe "if(!$resp->is_valid === false)" will work better. I included this in 1.4.16, but the problem does not happen for me, so one of you will have to test it out.
Other than that, maybe a reCAPTCHA expert can tell us what we are doing wrong.