well you would need to look at similar property value related sentencing vs ease of use vs planning requirement to make a evaluation to see if the sentance is fair or at least in line with existing standards
typically bigger plots, more dollar value and slower more methodical damage results in higher sentences
The charge is often referred to as criminal mischief
being defined as criminal, not civil, likely means jail
S 145.10 Criminal mischief in the second degree.
A person is guilty of criminal mischief in the second degree when with intent to damage property of another person, and having no right to do so nor any reasonable ground to believe that he has such right, he damages property of another person in an amount exceeding one thousand five hundred dollars.
Criminal mischief in the second degree is a class D felony.
If you define it as use of explosives (spark. maybe. kinda a stretch.) you get class B felony regardless of damage caused (i.e. fire hazard, etc).
'D' Violent Felony 2-7 years
'D' Non Violent Felony No Jail, Probation, 1-3 to 7 years
So they must have charged him with other stuff or considered if a class B felony (the ranges for sentencing overlap between violent and nonviolent).
https://codes.findlaw.com/ny/penal-law/pen-sect-145-12.htmlSince you are destroying a computer (its not like destroying someones garden) you can also stack some tampering charges to that, since you disabled a computing center (but the law is kinda archaic)
https://www.lawserver.com/law/state/new-york/ny-laws/ny_penal_law_145-20also you can argue, that unlike smashing a bunch of PC's physically, if you just fry them invisibly through USB ports you can try to blame it on lightning or something, so it can create lots of confusion being a sabotage type activity rather then just plain obvious vandalism. Suddenly your doing a massive investigation looking for lighting damage, replacing circuit breakers, hiring electricians, blaming distributors, blaming engineers..... chaos. could cost a contract even (bad computers, poorly protected since everything else works). invisible damage is really far reaching compared to just pissed off obvious vandalism and the sentencing likely takes some weight from that consideration.