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Terry Childs Denied Motion For Retrial
snydeq writes "The former San Francisco network administrator who refused to hand over passwords for one of the city's networks has been denied a new trial and is expected to be sentenced Aug. 6. Terry Childs had been due for sentencing Friday but the court instead heard two defense motions, one requesting a new trial and the other for arrested judgment — essentially to have his original conviction overturned. The motions were both denied but the court then ran out of time before the sentencing phase could be conducted."
Withhold a password, go to jail.
Not really sure that justice was served here but the guy really was a first-rate dickhead.
This ain't rocket surgery.
"He does his job AFTER he's fired?" HUH?!?!
When you're fired, your job is OVER. Your right to exercise control over the City's stuff is DONE.
Terry Childs is a stupid, neurotic fool. But there's no indication that he's a thief or a scumbag. He's been punished way more than enough by now. I hope the judge gives him credit for time served and ends this.
A couple summations:
Let's see:
Terry Childs:
City of San Fran
So I recommend that Terry Childs be put to death just for being a jerk and to make sure non of us ever have to work with him again/interact with him again. Then we fire the City of San Fran CIO and forbid him from ever working in IT again.
(bangs gavel)
Advice: on VPS providers
Sorry, but that's retarded. It's like saying you don't have to return a company laptop when you're fired if they forget to take it from your office before they throw you out of the building.
Just because your job is over doesn't mean you are allowed to hold on to things that do not belong to you. These aren't his passwords and it's not his network. It never was, despite what he obviously thinks in his little mind, but it certainly isn't anymore.
In a black and white world maybe.
But both you and OP are being silly.
When your job is over that does not mean that legal obligations end.
I suppose my boss could invite me out for lunch, fire me, and then keep my car, which is parked on company property and accessible via a locked gate with a keycard. My keycard would no longer work, and he'd be under no obligation to do anything for me, a non-employee. Heck, my iPod in my desk drawer. Gone.
The law is rarely black and white and this case is no exception.
Child's went to lenghts to ensure that no one else had the passwords and to ensure that only HE could access the networks. Read some of the juror comments from the trial. This was not a black and white case.
Happens all the time. There are very fixed time allowances on appeals. For example, if you plead or are found guilty in federal court, you have ten days to file an appeal, or at least preserve your right to appeal. If you do not file within that ten days (even if you tell your lawyer to do so and he does not) you effectively waive your right to appeal. You may collaterally attack but collateral attacks are civil actions and you are no longer entitled to counsel.
Think that's unfair? There are cases that would blow your minds. How about a death row inmate who filed his pro se appeal late, and was denied appeal of his death sentence. He finally got heard in the US Supreme Court but Scalia and Thomas dissented, saying "too late, too bad, so sad.."
Time limit injustice is way too common, (and tolling is not often granted) but this injustice is not often discussed, because as I often say, citizens in the US know NOTHING about the system that can suck them in at a moment's notice.
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
snydeq, tell your puppetmasters at InfoWorld to just give this a rest, won't you? Childs was the kind of uber-dickhead SysAdmin that even normal, run-of-the-mill garden-variety dickhead SysAdmins are afraid to associate with lest they appear as parodies of the type.
He didn't have a higher calling. He's not Batman. This ain't no Ayn Rand novel. He was fired and refused to release property that belonged to his former employer. Period, end of story.
And it *would* be the end of the story if the friggin' Drama Club at InfoWorld would stop flogging it on slashdot..
He was a front-lines IT grunt. His job was to do whatever his superiors told him to do, barring any requests to do something illegal. If his superiors order him to open the admin interface to the outside world, and change the password to "password"... other than requesting that the demand be put in e-mail to protect his name, he is supposed to do so.
Exactly what criminal law would not allow him to turn passwords over to his management on request, no matter how unqualified they are? None.
Holding your employer's equipment hostage pending an audience with the mayor? Yeah, that was, and is, criminal. It's called extortion.
SirWired