Sarah Palin e-mail hacker gets one year in jail

LONDON - Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s e-mail hacker has been sentenced to a year in state custody.

The student was sentenced after being convicted of hacking into Palin’s email account in 2008.

Prosecutors said that David Kernell guessed the answers to Palin’s security questions and reset her password.

Defence lawyers tried to defend the offence as a youthful prank, as they said Kernell was a 20-year-old student at the University of Tennessee when he committed the crime.

The judge recommended his term be served in a halfway house instead of prison.

Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential candidate, compared the hacking to the Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon.

Kernell, son of Democratic Tennessee state legislator Mike Kernell, apologised to former Alaska governor and her family after the sentence was handed down.

In 2008 a hacker broke into a Yahoo! e-mail account used by Ms Palin and revealed several inconsequential personal messages.

Though, Palin did not immediately comment on the sentencing, she wrote on her facebook page after the conviction of Kennell.

“My family and I are thankful that the jury thoroughly and carefully weighed the evidence and issued a just verdict,” the BBC quoted her as she wrote. (ANI)