Welcome to Leavenworth! Population: You.
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.
See my post, immediately after yours.
I did - thanks. What is supervised control?
Fancy phrase for probation.
If we imprison every college kid who does something stupid, we’ll need a lot more prisons. I know he needs to be punished, but I think a felony conviction and maybe a short jail term is plenty.
Gotcha! Thank you.
Posting the emails on the internet was harrassment.
-PJ
i was thinking the same thing.
Totally agree,
I hope he gets about 6 months to a year and everyone can move on.
Have you ever had your private information stolen?
Think about the implications.
Her children were harassed.
Her private conversations were published and broadcast nationally.
He attempted to sabotage a national campaign for President and Vice President of the United States, and probably succeeded.
Do not trivialize this, sir.
He hacked the email account of somebody running for Vice President of the United States, and posted the emails containing personal information on the web. The daughter of that candidate, as a result, had hundreds of unwanted cell phone calls, some threatening. The stated purpose was to cause embarrassment to the candidate, in hopes of changing votes.
You don’t find this malicious? It’s just “something stupid?”
There are MINIMUM sentencing guidelines for federal crimes. The minimum he would get for obstruction of justice alone would be 15 months prison time. Based on a first conviction, if both convictions are added together, he could receive as much as 97 months in prison.
I predict he will probably get 36 months and be out in 2 years.
Check the federal sentencing guidelines. The judge probably can't give him less than about 24 months.
This is intentional political sabotage. Not doing something with it isn’t the point. It’s like someone getting into your house, but not stealing anything.
Welcome to Leavenworth! Population: You.
I don’t know squat about the guidelines, so I’m already in “I’m a doofus” territory.
:^)
Yeah, it was malicious and stupid and he’s a punk and he deserves some punishment. He guessed her passwords and posted some of it on some blogs. Then he got scared and tried to hide. Not a conspiracy, just stupid.
James O’Keefe, the ACORN video guy snuck into a Senators office to do “something” with the phones. Another stupid stunt by a guy in his 20’s, but not the crime of the century. I’m sure the DU crowd will be howling for his blood.
Liberals are vicious and vindictive. We don’t have to be.
While I doubt that he'll get much jail time, if any, one of his convictions was felony obstruction of justice, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years.
That's one of the two major counts.
And a felony conviction, even without jail time, is a felony conviction.
As others have pointed out, he will lose significant civil rights. As well, he will be severely limited in his job opportunities. Most corporations won't hire a convicted felon for a professional position. Traditionally, I've been willing to hire folks with criminal records (in exceptional cases), but they are restricted in what roles they can perform in my company, and the best-paying jobs are forever foreclosed to them.
sitetest
Thank you! I’ve been wondering about the minimums. Have been on the other thread...
What happens in regards to the mistrial on the 4th count? Does it just get dropped at this point?
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