The US Justice system, with its unique perspective reality, is set to sentence a 22 year old to 20 years in prison for hacking the email of Republican US vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's and posting some of its contents on the internet.

After four days of deliberations, a federal jury found David Kernell, the 22-year-old son of a Democratic Tennessee state legislator, guilty of obstruction of justice, a felony, and unauthorised access of a computer, a misdemeanor. Kernell was cleared of a wire fraud charge, and the jury could not agree on a verdict on a charge of identity theft. Judge Thomas Phillips declared a mistrial on the identity theft charge but did not set a date for sentencing. The obstruction charge alone carries a prison sentence of up to 20 years, while the misdemeanor count is punishable by up to one year in jail.

Palin praised the jury and prospectors for nailing the guy and claiming that it was absolutely vital that kids that embarrass politicians should be locked up forever. "Besides the obvious invasion of privacy and security concerns surrounding this issue, many of us are concerned about the integrity of our country's political elections. America's elections depend upon fair competition," the statement said. She claimed that invading someone's privacy for political gain, has long been repugnant to Americans' sense of fair play. “As Watergate taught us, we rightfully reject illegally breaking into candidates' private communications for political intrigue in an attempt to derail an election.”

This would be a little less of an issue if Palin herself did not break into the computer of a political rival in the hope of getting dirt on him, but hey the hack was the son of a democrat and that is different. Kernell's attorney had argued during the weeklong trial the hacking of Palin's email account amounted to nothing more than a college prank. However the prosecutors claimed it was all a terrorist attempt to bring down the Palin's campaign.

In September 2008, Kernell did a little research and some guesswork to answer security questions and gain access to Palin's personal email account. At the time, published reports had questioned whether the then-Alaska governor had improperly used her personal email to conduct official business. Official business has to be recorded at was clear at the time that Palin was using unofficial accounts so that she did not have to do somethings from the record.