Husband Charged with a Felony for Snooping on Wife’s Email

This seems a bit ridiculous, don’t you guys think, at least from a public policy perspective? A husband married to his wife and still living with her,  suspects she is cheating on him. So, he snoops, uses his wife’s passwords, accesses her gmail account from their home computer confirming his suspicion of an alleged cheating. He files for a divorce this month. But, not before the Michigan District Attorney (DA), where he resides, files a criminal complaint against him charging him with a felony under Identity Fraud statutes.

Justification according to prosecuting attorney who charges him: “Oakland County, Michigan prosecutor Jessica Cooper told the Free Press that she was justified in charging Walker. “The guy is a hacker,” she said. The email account “was password protected.”

Ms. Cooper, really? *Rolls eyes* Clearly your  office has nothing better to do. The charge ought to be dismissed.

“Michigan resident Leon Walker faces a peculiar predicament: he’s been charged with a felony for secretly checking out his wife’s email account.

Using his wife’s password, Walker accessed her Gmail account and learned she allegedly was having an affair, according to this article in the Detroit Free Press.

State prosecutors in Michigan have charged Walker under a statute used typically to prosecute identity theft or theft of trade secrets, the Free Press Reports. (Hat tip: JonathanTurley.org)

Walker, who divorced his wife this month, faces a criminal trial in February and up to 5 years in prison.

A few weeks back, we noted that the Sixth Circuit had ruled that people have a reasonable expectation that their emails will remain private and further that the government needs a search warrant to snoop through emails stored by Internet Service Providers.”

WSJ has the full story,