The lack of technical expertise, combined with the many confusing questions posed by the defense attorney, may cause doubt for many jury members, thus rendering a not guilty decision. The only short-term solution to this problem is to provide simple testimony in laymen's terms and to use demonstrative evidence whenever possible. Even with this, it will be difficult for many juries to return a guilty verdict. Criminal conduct is broken down into two classifications depending on severity. A felony is the more serious of the two, normally resulting in a jail term of more than one year.
Misdemeanors are normally punishable by a fine or a jail sentence of less than a year.
It is important to understand that to deter future attacks, stricter sentencing must be sought, which only occurs under the felonious classification. The type of attack or the total dollar loss has a direct relationship to the crime classification. Although there is a plethora of federal and state statutes that may be used against traditional criminal offenses, and even though many of these same statutes may be applied to computer-related crimes with some measure of success, it is clear that many cases fail to reach prosecution or fail to result in conviction because of the gaps that exists in the federal criminal code and the individual state criminal statutes.