Wired, still running with a story that local media sources have apparently fallen asleep on,
reports on updates to the state's case against alleged Palin email "hacker" and local Guess Jeans model David Kernell.
Citing
the prosecution's quick-and-dirty March Madness with charges against his client and an Alaskan court's decision that
Palin's private email accounts on which she allegedly pursued government business must be preserved, Kernell attorney Wade Davies has moved that all charges be dropped or reduced to misdemeanors. His reasoning?
Tennessee, he says, only recognizes an invasion of privacy when the
invasion exposes something that is inherently private, and the victim
was placed in a false light by the invasion. But Palin wasn't placed in
a false light by the alleged hack, and her privacy wasn't invaded since
"an Alaska court has issued an order requiring Ms. Palin to preserve
the correspondence in her private e-mail accounts on the grounds that
the e-mails are public records." -Wired
Davies asserts that no expectation of privacy can be afforded the Palinian Yahoo, as its status (as he reckons it) as a matter of public record procludes privacy. By killing the privacy issue, Davies would successfully blunt the felony status of the prosecution's case.
Whether Davies' litigation is writing checks that his education can't cash is a matter for the court to decide, but damn if it isn't entertaining. Moves as ballsy as that kick this thing out of the realm of judicial chess matches and into the world of full-on legal wire-fu.
Less exciting are Davies' arguments that wire fraud charges should be dropped. He claims that Palin was deprived of no "traditional" property since emails are "ethereal", but I'm not as sold on this one. I think that I could dissuade Davies of his belief given five unauthorized minutes with any email account of his which contains, say, a credit card number or two.
