BlackBerry/YouTube screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET

The thumping excitement that surrounds sexting can sometimes suppress the hardheaded need for focusing.

Evidence of this comes from the torrid tale of Craig Evans.

Evans is a 24-year-old swimming teacher from my own hometown of Birmingham, England.

As the Daily Mail tells it -- and an appeals court heard it -- Evans was rather keen to engage a lover in "skin to skin" activities. He also wondered whether she would prefer it "fast or slow."

His chosen method of communicating this wasn't a whisper in the ear, nor a love letter sent by mail.

No, he whipped out his BlackBerry, a whipping-out that resulted in him being sentenced to jail.

For he wasn't quite au fait with the BlackBerry's methods and his sexting wafted by BlackBerry Messenger to everyone on his contact list. Given that he was a swimming teacher, it so happened that two people on the list were girls aged 13 and 14.

In July, a court decided he deserved 18 months in jail for the slip of the fingers. The court decided that he had caused or incited a child into sexual activity.

His lawyers, however, wondering if the Birmingham judges might have been a little narrow-minded, rushed to an appeals court in far more worldly London.

Their argument seems to have been quite a fine one. It consisted of pointing out that the very same sexting went to members of Evans' family. And I am sure they didn't exclaim: "Good Evans!"

The appeals court agreed that it couldn't conclude Evans had targeted any minor. For, indeed, he was targeting one person, who was entirely of age. It's just that those BlackBerrys are very hard to operate. Or something.

Evans' sentence was reduced to a suspended 9 months, which meant that he was immediately freed.

I wonder if he will graduate to a Samsung Galaxy S3 or an iPhone 5.

The slightly larger screens might help him better see what he's doing, should the urge to love grip him in the future.