In 2010 federal jury convicted David Kernell, a college student who broke into Sarah Palin’s email account, of unauthorized access to a computer and obstruction of justice. The young Obama supporter was sentenced to a year in prison in November 2010. The judge recommended that Kernell serve his time in a halfway house. Sadly, that didn’t work out.
Sarah Palin testified against Kernell, the son of a prominent liberal politician from Tennessee, at the trial.
David Kernell, the son of liberal Tennessee State Representative Mike Kernell was indicted in October 2008 by a federal grand jury in Knoxville, Tennessee., for intentionally accessing without authorization the e-mail account of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.
Today, young democrat David Kernell lost another appeal.
Reuters reported:
A former college student convicted for hacking into Sarah Palin’s e-mail account during the 2008 presidential election lost a bid to overturn his felony conviction on Monday.
The former University of Tennessee student, David Kernell, argued he was not aware of any pending investigation when he deleted information from his computer related to the hacking of Palin’s account. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit found Kernell’s awareness of a possible future FBI investigation was enough to uphold a conviction on obstruction of justice.
Kernell guessed his way into Palin’s Yahoo! account in September 2008, stumbling upon the correct answer to the password security question of where Palin met her spouse. After snooping through Palin’s email and taking several screenshots, he changed the account’s password and posted it on an Internet message board where he boasted about the breach.
The incident gave rise to one of the most high-profile jury trials in the Eastern District of Tennessee’s history, with testimony from Palin and her reality TV star daughter, Bristol Palin. While Kernell claimed the hacking was a college prank, the prosecution painted the breach as a politically motivated attempt to derail the campaign of Palin and her presidential running mate John McCain.
