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Judge Rejects Guilty Plea From AOL Employee

Posted by timothy on from the I-want-this-judge-in-my-traffic-court dept.

The Hobo writes "Newsday has a story on a New York judge who rejected Jason Smather's guilty plea. Smathers, covered previously on Slashdot, was the AOL employee who stole and sold AOL addresses to spammers. The judge himself apparently cancelled his AOL subscription due to receiving too much spam. While he didn't like what Jason did, he wasn't convinced a crime had been committed under the CAN-SPAM law, which requires that a person be deceived."

3 of 231 comments (clear)

  1. Does not compute by October_30th · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Authorities said Smathers, who was fired by AOL in June, used another employee's access code to steal the list of AOL customers in 2003 from its headquarters in Dulles, Va., and sold it to spammers for more than $100,000.

    I don't understand how this is not deceptive, fraudulent and illegal...

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    1. Re:Does not compute by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 4, Insightful
      It is. It just doesn't meet the specifics of CAN-SPAM, which is evidently what he was charged with, and tried to plead guilty to.

      What the judge did was, IMHO, right, in the same way that bank robbery doesn't meet the specifics of the traffic laws.

      Charge him with what he actually did, and let him plead guilty to that.

  2. Re:Shouldn't he recuse himself? by techno-vampire · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Actually, it looks like he's doing everything he can to avoid even the appearance of bias. He rejected the guilty plea because he's not convinced that the accuse's actions fit the requirements of the CAN-SPAM act. If he were biased, he'd just let the guy plead guilty and be done with it.

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