Michigan man faces jail time for reading wife's email messages

by Steven Mostyn - Dec 27 2010, 09:30

Heed the following warning if you currently suspect your partner is hiding something that could potentially damage your relationship: Be careful where you look for evidence of lies, deception or infidelity because you might end up facing a prison sentence.

More pointedly, 33-year-old Leon Walker is heading for a February 7 court date on charges of computer misuse after he used his wife’s email password to read sensitive messages in her Gmail account.

According to Mr. Walker of Rochester Hills, Michigan, he retrieved worrying messages from Clara Walker’s email account after suspecting she was in contact with her second husband, who’d previously been arrested for assaulting her in front of her son.

Once armed with messages confirming his suspicions—and concerned for the welfare of his wife and child—Mr. Walker promptly passed the emails on to his wife’s first husband and the child’s biological father.

“I was doing what I had to do,” he explained in a Detroit Free Press report. “We’re talking about putting a child in danger.”

In offering a professional opinion on the matter, privacy law expert Frederick Lane said he questioned whether Clara Walker could legitimately claim that her privacy had been compromised on a computer she openly shared with her husband.

He also wondered whether Oakland County prosecutors didn't have “more important things to do” seeing as the computer misuse law is usually brought to bear in extremely serious cases regarding identity theft and the pilfering of trade secrets.

However, in answering those concerns, prosecutor Jessica Cooper labelled Mr. Walker as a “hacker” who abused his skills as a computer technician to pry into his wife’s personal email.

Beyond facing possible jail time on a felony charge, Mr. Walker has also been served divorce papers.

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