Jury gets Palin e-mail hacking case

KNOXVILLE, Tenn., April 27 (UPI) -- A Knoxville, Tenn., jury is deliberating the case of a former University of Tennessee student accused of hacking into political luminary Sarah Palin's e-mail.

The jury got the case Monday. The former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate testified last week. Defendant David Kernell opted not to testify, the Knoxville News Sentinel reported Monday.

Prosecutors accused Kernell, 22, of hacking into then-Gov. Palin's private Yahoo! e-mail account in 2008, reading some of its content, downloading photos then changing the password and allowing 10 people to visit Palin's account more than 70 times.

"He's not a kid," Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Weddle told the jury in closing arguments Monday. "He's a man old enough to know better. He set out to do something malicious from the very beginning."

Weddle said Kernell wanted to find something politically damaging to Palin to disrupt the Republican presidential campaign and hacked into Palin's private e-mail account after stories were published she used it to hide government business from the public, an accusation she denied.

Defense attorney Wade Davies said Kernell was curious about the account after reading the articles, but insisted the son of Memphis Democrat state Rep. Mike Kernell didn't think Palin, given her notoriety, would use such a poorly protected account, the News Sentinel said.

"He wasn't a little computer hacker," Davies said. "He was not, as you've heard, a person who was obsessed with Sarah Palin. He had never mentioned her before. He used information that was available in the newspaper" to determine her password and security question.