David Kernell

David Kernell

The Sarah Palin email hack occurred on September 16, 2008, during the 2008 United States presidential election campaign when the Yahoo! personal email account of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin was subjected to unauthorized access. The hacker, David Kernell, had obtained access to Palin's account by looking up biographical details such as her high school and birthdate and using Yahoo!'s account recovery for forgotten passwords. Kernell then posted several pages of Palin's email on 4chan's /b/ board. Kernell, who at the time of the offense was a 20-year-old college student, is the son of longtime Democratic state representative Mike Kernell of Memphis.

He was charged in October 2008 in federal court. After he was led into the court in leg irons and handcuffs, the judge released him on his own recognizance, pending trial. The incident was ultimately prosecuted in a U.S. federal court as four felony crimes punishable by up to 50 years in federal prison. The charges were three felonies: identity theft, wire fraud, and anticipatory obstruction of justice; and one optional as felony or misdemeanor: intentionally accessing an account without authorization. Kernell pleaded not guilty to all counts.

A jury trial, featuring the testimony of Sarah Palin and Bristol Palin, began on April 20, 2010. On April 30, 2010, the jury found Kernell guilty on two counts: the felony of anticipatory obstruction of justice and the misdemeanor of unauthorized access to a computer. Sarah Palin posted a note on her Facebook page stating that she and her family were thankful the jury had rendered a just verdict in her opinion.

Kernell was sentenced on November 12, 2010, to one year plus a day in federal custody, followed by three years of supervised release. The sentencing judge recommended that the custody be served in a halfway house, but the Federal Bureau of Prisons sent him instead to a minimum security prison. In January 2012, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit found Kernell's awareness of a possible future FBI investigation was enough to uphold a conviction on obstruction of justice.