Trout found guilty on four counts

A jury found former Greenville County Councilman Tony Trout guilty on four of five counts. They found him guilty of accessing County Administrator Joe Kernell's computer without authorization and in furtherance of a criminal act; accessing the Yahoo! computer without authorization; illegally intercepting electronic communication; and unlawfully disclosing that information.

They found him not guilty on the charge of destruction of evidence.

The judge could sentence Trout to up to 16 years. He is now out on bond.

When asked whether he had any comment while leaving court, he said to ask his “PR advisor” and pointed to his wife.

When asked if he was disappointed, his response was, “Yes, a little bit.”

By the time he reached the end of Magnolia Street, Trout’s wife told reporters they would say no more.

The verdict comes after three days in court during which a federal prosecutor likened the computer spyware program Tony Trout is accused of planting on Greenville County Administrator Joe Kernell’s computer to the Arnold Schwarzenegger character in “The Terminator” and said Trout was its “task master.”

In his closing argument, prosecutor Dean Eichelberger called Trout's actions "political dirty tricks of the worst sort."

Eichelberger told the jury that Trout wanted to "destroy Joe Kernell" because he did not get his way.

"I'm not going to say there's not issues with Mr. Kernell for violations of county use policies. He can address that," Eichelberger said. "What (Tony Trout) found doesn't change the fact that he violated the law."

Eichelberger told the jury the explanations offered by Trout are "neither credible or consistent."

Defense attorney Ben Stepp told the jury in his closing argument that Trout's focus was finding out what a county employee was doing on a county computer.

"If Mr. Trout thought what he was doing was illegal, why would he put it on his Web site, give it to a friend or want the FBI to have it?" he said. "Mr. Trout felt like he wasn't doing anything wrong. He was exposing wrongdoing."

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