A Michigan man faces up to 5 years in prison for reading his wife's e-mail to find out if she was having an affair, the Detroit Free Press reports.

The newspaper says Leon Walker, 33, of Rochester Hills, has been charged with a felony after reading Clara Walker's GMail account on a laptop the now-divorced couple shared. He goes to trial in February.

Oakland County prosecutors used a state statute typically used to prosecute crimes like identity theft or stealing trade secrets, the newspaper says.

Leon, Clara Walker's third husband, found out in an e-mail that she was having an affair with her second husband, who was once arrested for beating her in front of her small son. Leon Walker showed the e-mail to that son's father, Clara's first husband, who filed an emergency motion to obtain custody.

"I was doing what I had to do," Leon Walker, a computer technician, tells the Free Press. "We're talking about putting a child in danger."

Oakland County prosecutor Jessica Cooper, in a voice mail to the newspaper, calls Walker a skilled "hacker" who used his wife's e-mail "in a contentious way."

In preliminary testimony, Clara testified that while Leon had bought her that laptop, it was hers alone and that she kept the password a secret.

Leon Walker says he routinely used the computer and that she kept all of her passwords in a small book next to it. "It was a family computer," he says. "I did work on it all the time."

(Posted by Doug Stanglin)