We have no reason to suppose that the ex employees actions were justified. None whatsoever. He committed both a civil wrong and a crime and the default assumption ought to be that he ought to face both civil and criminal penalties. You tax dollars pay for punishing people who vandalize a car, I have no idea why they ought not to pay for punishing someone who vandalizes a server.

We may remain open to additional information without presuming that uncivil and illegal vandalism was justified indeed without inventing a narrative from whole cloth as you have done. The logical conclusion is that drawing from your own life experience you identify so strongly with the narrative of the wronged sysadmin that you desire to fit a narrative to sparse facts that has no basis in fact.

We are merely commenting on a story on hacker news. We aren't members of the jury and don't face the same burden or power. I'm down with repealing the cfaa because its badly written, I'm down with figuring out who dropped the ball as far as giving the sysadmin access post firing, but as to the sysadmin himself, burn the witch!