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Posted on 04/30/2010 12:49:09 PM PDT by rhema
The 22-year-old man accused of hacking into the Yahoo! email account of Sarah Palin while she was the Republican candidate for vice president was found guilty of two of four counts: unlawful computer access and obstruction of justice, according to a report in the Knoxville News Sentinel. He was acquitted of the charge of wire fraud and a mistrial was declared on count one, identity theft.
David Kernell was a 20-year-old economics student at the University of Tennessee when he hacked his way past security questions to access Palin's personal email account in 2008. Kernell gained access by providing Palin's birth date and ZIP code to Yahoo's password retrieval system. At that time, she was the governor of Alaska and recently recruited as running mate in the presidential bid of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
The government will decide next week whether to retry the case, with sentencing to follow after that decision is made, according to @hsumerford reporting via Twitter from the scene. Kernell and his attorney had no comment for the press as they left the courtroom, he added.
A jury in Knoxville, Tenn. comprised of six men and six women, began hearing testimony last week in the case, including from Palin and her daughter Bristol, who both testified that the event disrupted their lives.
"It caused a huge disruption in the campaign," Palin told jurors during her 45 minutes of testimony last Friday.
The jury began its deliberations on Tuesday morning after receiving instructions from U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Phillips and continued for more than five hours before concluding for the day. The jurors continued discussion all day Wednesday and Thursday. By Thursday afternoon, the jurors were unanimous on their decision in three of the four charges, but were deadlocked on count one, the charge of identity theft.
The jurors' discussion seemed to be heating up on Thursday. In a note to the judge, the jurors said: "Some of us feel not all jurors are following the jury instruction."
When they could not come to a verdict on the charge of identity theft, the judge refused to accept a partial verdict and sent them back into the jury room to reach a decision on count one.
After another full day of deliberation on Friday, the jury acquitted Kernell of count two, wire fraud, but it remained deadlocked on count one, felony identity theft.
Kernell was charged with four felonies – felony identity theft, wire fraud, accessing Palin's email account without authorization and obstructing an FBI investigation. If convicted, he faced 50 years in prison.
Charges, possible sentence
Count one: identity theft
Maximum five years in prison
$250,000 fine
Three years supervised release
Count two: wire fraud
Maximum 20 years in prison
$250,000 fine
Five years supervised release
Count three: unlawful computer access
Maximum five years in prison
$250,000 fine
Three years supervised release
Lesser included misdemeanor offense on count three carries a maximum of one year in prison
Count four: obstruction of justice
Maximum 20 years in prison
$250,000 fine
Five years supervised release
Wade Davies, Kernell's attorney, argued that "what he did was closer to a prank than a crime." He added that Kernell didn't use the information he accessed or harass Palin's family. But prosecution lawyer Thomas Van Flein told the jury the hacking was "disruptive to [Palin's] ability to communicate with her staff."
Answering reporters' questions following her testimony last Friday, Palin said, "It's not right. It's not legal. It's not fair. It's not decent."
Davies argued that federal authorities trumped up charges because the high-profile Palin is the alleged victim. He urged jurors to penalize Kernell only for what he claimed was the more appropriate conviction: misdemeanor unauthorized computer access.
Kernell was present in court throughout the proceedings, but did not testify. He is the son of Democratic state Rep. Mike Kernell of Memphis, who has served in the state's House of Representatives for more than three decades.
Sentencing will follow.
20 years for obstruction = parking ticket because he is a Crat.
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I think that's a reasonable bet - someplace between 6-18 months of actual prison time.
OTOH, this was committed during a Presidential election. The judge might want to send a message. Plus, federal probation is NOT a walk in the park.
True...but I do like the “decent” remark.
How long till Obama pardons him?
I would have to look at the guidelines to be sure, but I believe he's in the first zone (A), which means the judge would have the flexibility to sentence him to federal probation, only.
My only caveat is I think there's an enhancement for obstruction, which might bump him to the next level inside that zone, which could mean mandatory prison time.
There were two charges with a max of 20 years. Convicted on one.
Hardly conviction on "none of the major charges."
The actual sentence depends on the "guidelines," which are very complicated, and are lower if you have no criminal record, but are usually somewhat proportional to the max. Then the judge now has a good bit more discretion than a few years ago, but still usually somewhere in the guideline range. We'll see.
Why are you guys saying no jail time. Someone at C4P said the judge was appointed by GWB and also didn’t this Judge strike down a request of some sort by the defence?
Plus this was an adult hacking into the VP nominee of the Republicans during an election and posting the password for the whole world to see.
Bull****. The harassment came about by posting Gov Palin's email login info on a hacker site. He knew what would happen.
Both of the articles put palin’s name in the headline, NOT the perp, and he’s the one who was convicted of a crime. Expose his name. He’s a DNC brownshirt who hacked a candidate’s email to snoop during an election.
If it had been Obama, there wouldn’t have been a deadlock. He’d be gone.
Billy Dee Willims never looked so bad.
I heard he was sentenced to 20 hours of community service with ACORN.
I could well be wrong but those notations have *got* to be add-on sentences *after* release from prison.How in God's name can you have a crime that has a max of 20 years and $250K and has a minimum of 5 years probation??? That's like saying that the max for murder 1 is death and the minimum is 10 years probation.
Jury prestty much got it right on this case.
Wire fraud was a non-starter from the get-go. ID threft charge is a real stretch, too.
On the obstruction of justice; just one more instance when the smart thing to do is never talk to the cops.
Best advice is to not hack into someone’s email.
10AM...1/20/2013
Oops, Williams
I agree with the one year in prision but I don’t see how he will get only 5 years supervised when 2 of the charges mandate 5 and 3 years supervied release?That comes to 8 years supervised and IMHO if they do retrail for identy theft he is most likely to be found guilty because of the other two prior convictions. IMHO he will be be sentaenced to 5-15 years and let out after 12 months to 18 months. If found guilty of the other charge he is liable to do 3 years before being released.
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