Convicted of hacking-related crimes, reporter will stay out of prison for now

Matthew Keys talks to reporters after he was sentenced to two years in prison. (credit: Cyrus Farivar)

Reporter Matthew Keys will not be going to federal prison today as he was scheduled to. His attorney, Jay Leiderman, tweeted the news today after he and the other lawyers on Keys’ legal team filed an emergency motion with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals last night.

An automatic stay has issued in the @MatthewKeysLive case. He will not be reporting to prison today.

— Jay Leiderman (@JayLeidermanLaw) June 15, 2016

The Tuesday filing automatically triggers a temporary stay, according to the 9th Circuit’s Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure. So the California journalist convicted in 2015 of hacking-related crimes will remain out of custody for now.

Keys was convicted at trial under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), the notorious anti-hacking federal law that dates back to the 1980s. An effort to reform that law has languished in Congress. The 29-year-old was scheduled to begin serving his two-year sentence beginning Wednesday at 2pm Pacific Time at a federal prison camp in Atwater, California, about 120 miles east of San Francisco.

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