One way to avoid a criminal conviction in the United States is to ensure the existence of reasonable doubt. Part of the reason people are told to never share passwords is that auth credentials are recognized as a form of self-repudiation. If only a limited number of people know the credentials, one of them has to be the perpetrator, if it's essentially common onowledge though we return to our technical, trivially auditable digital paper trail tracing back to a user-agent at best.

This is a move that a layman in the legal system would probably not have pursued. It is however, a great way to create plausible deniability. This'll probably backfire in the long run though. Judges and juries are touchy on that sort of thing.