The Supreme Court Has Voided the Conviction of a Cop Who Sold Police Computer Data
The U.S. Supreme Court divided along unusual lines Thursday to reverse the conviction of a police sergeant who used his police car computer to access and then sell a license plate number in exchange for $5,000.
The vote was 6-to-3, with the court’s newest justice, Amy Coney Barrett, writing the majority opinion for herself, liberal Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan and conservative Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. The dissenters were Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, and Chief Justice John Roberts.
At issue was the interpretation of the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a federal law that makes it a crime for an individual to “exceed authorized access to a computer” in order to obtain information he is “not entitled so to obtain.”
