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Latest Happenings in the case

February 5, 2003 - Letter arrives from the Georgia Department of Corrections as follows: We are happy to inform you that your case has been closed here in this office without adjudication of guilt due to you having completed the terms of probation as imposed under the First Offender Act. You are therefore discharged under the provisions of said act (OCGAA42-8-60,et.seq.):

A. The defendant be discharged without adjudication of guilt;

B. That this discharge shall completely exonerate the defendant of any criminal purpose.

C. That this discharge shall not affect any of said defendant's civil rights or liberties; and

D. The defendant shall not be considered to have a criminal conviction.

E. Thi discharge may not be used to disqualify a person in any application for employment or appointment to office in either the public or private sector.

January 17, 2003 - 1 Year Probation Ends. This Probation period wasn't even supposed to happen under the aggreement the State proposed to my Lawyer and I but Judge had no choice under the guidelines of the Hacking Statute that "Needs serious Fine Tuning".

June 25, 2002 - TechTV Documentary and interview airs. They also interviewed Dr David Anderson, Director of SETI who was instrumental in showing support of David McOwen and the Distrubuting Computing Technology that the State of Georgia said was a criminal technology and the State wants to shut down.

May 5, 2002 - TechTV did a documentary and interview, details to follow on air date.

So many people to thank. Putting up a new page here called Thank You

1-17-2002: A settlement is reached in the case in Court. An agreement as close to the State would go in saying the charges never should have happened. There will be no criminal record and exoneration of any criminal purpose. The State asked for and was granted $2,100 in restitution to be paid to DeKalb Technical College (presumed to be the actual amount to go around and click on the delete key to remove the Distributed.net program). 80 Hours of Community Service specified to not have anything to do with Computers. There was not supposed to be a Probation period but the Judge had no choice but to issue a Mandatory 1 Year Probation based on the Hacking Statute that the State was charging David under.

12-20-01: Georgia AG's Office Caught red-handed breaking into Forum site setup for the support of David. Click here for more info.

12-19-01: The new first Court Calendar Call Date has been set for January 18th 2002 and the Trial Date has now been set for January 28th 2002.

12-14-01: The discovery and evidence material for trial has now been turned over to Mr Joyner of the defense. (An image of the documents)

12-5-01: The original first Court Calendar Date of December 10th 2001 has been put off by a continuance granted by Judge Workman today. The State has not handed over Discovery evidence to the defense yet at this time. There is no firm date set yet with speculation that the date may be towards the end of January 2002.

11-8-01: Standing between Ms. Schansman (an Attorney representing the Attorney Generals Office) and Mr Joyner today in front of the Judge, David McOwen's Trial date was set for December 10, 2001.

10-15-01: David is arrested and jailed, booked and now awaiting trial. The State of Georgia has proceeded with the indictment and have handed down 8 Felony counts, 1 Count of Computer Theft, 7 counts Computer Trespass. Each count carries a 15 year possible prison term for 120 years maximum possible term. Each count also carries $50,000 fine plus the original $415,000 restitution and damages, so the State is seeking $815,000. 

8-2-2001: Based on the fact that the CNet News article specifically mentioned David's place of employment (Cingular Wireless), Cingular has summarily terminated him from his job in fear of bad publicity! He is now not only staring at mounting legal bills and the possibility of prison, he has no income. This has gotten completely out of hand. The State of Georgia has no concern for their ridiculous actions and the unnecessary grief they are causing this family.

7-8-2001 - Journalists begin to cover the Story and the Case. It appears in everything from the LA Times to the Boston Globe in print and online in places such as O'Reilly, SlashDot and Wired.com. On Television the story is covered on TechTV segment called The Screensavers with John Dvorak.

7-7-2001 - News of this spreads on the Internet around the world. An online petition is placed online by a supporter. David get's thousands of E-mails and phone calls.

7-6-2001 - Attorney General's Office informs David's Attorney that David will be facing at least 2 Felony counts each carrying 15 years and $50,000 fine for each count plus the State is seeking $415,000 the State claims the Distributed.net program cost the State in Internet Bandwidth.

7-5-2001 - Thanks to friends and Networking David meets with Attorney David Joyner that will take the case.

7-1-2001 - David writes a plea for help to the Internet Community at large.

6-30-2001 - David gets a call at work on unpublished Work only Cell phone at 5PM from a Georgia Bureau Of Investigations Agent. He asks if David is familiar with a program called Distributed.net and he says yes. He then says that he has been investigating David for 18 months and he as well as the Attorney General Thurbert Baker have decided to go forward in prosecuting David for Felony Counts under the Georgia Hacking Statute. David says are you aware you are talking about a Screen Saver? The Agent says the next time he will be speaking to David will be through an Attorney and he hangs up.

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