Further Reading Man sentenced to 30 months in prison after “lasering” two aircraft in 2012

A federal appeals court says a California high school student's 30-month prison sentence for firing a laser pointer at a small aircraft is too extreme.

The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that Adam Gardenhire should get no more than 10 months confinement after pleading guilty to pointing the laser at a small aircraft as it approached the Burbank Airport near Los Angeles in 2012.

The issue here is whether Gardenhire’s actions were “reckless."

As the court wrote in its 18-page opinion:

The district court’s finding that Gardenhire was aware of the risk created by his conduct lastly rests on the fact that Gardenhire’s high school friend who lent him the laser told him “not to shine the laser at anyone’s eyes because it would blind people.” But knowing that a laser beam can cause blindness when pointed directly at a person’s eyes is very different than knowing that a laser beam can be distracting to pilots who are both enclosed in a cockpit and at least 2,640 feet away. Nor did the government submit any evidence of what even an average person would know about the effects of aiming a laser beam at an aircraft.

In other words, the government didn't prove that Gardenhire knew that firing the laser at an airplane from the ground was dangerous—meaning the government didn't demonstrate his actions were reckless. Therefore, he did not deserve the harsher sentence, the San Francisco-based appeals court wrote.

No re-sentencing date has been set.