Sarah Palin e-mail hacker sentenced to just over a year
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The son of a Democratic legislator convicted of hacking into Sarah Palin’s personal e-mail account was sentenced Friday to serve a year and a day for the crime.
David Kernell, now 22, was a University of Tennessee student when he used biographical details he had looked up to get into Palin’s Yahoo! account in the latter days of the 2008 presidential election.
At the time, Palin had been the Republican vice presidential nominee. Kernell is the son of Mike Kernell, a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives.
On Friday, according to the Associated Press, U.S. District Judge Thomas W. Phillips recommended that Kernell be sent to a halfway house instead of prison, and suggested that he also get mental health treatment.
A jury found Kernell guilty in April of unauthorized access to a protected computer and of obstructing a federal investigation.
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Photos, from top: Sarah Palin at the Republican National Convention in 2008 (credit: Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times); David Kernell, left, leaves the federal courthouse in Knoxville, Tenn., with his attorney Wade Davies on Friday. (credit: Wade Payne/ Associated Press)
