Look at the situation outside the husband/wife scenario, which is what I suspect the judge in this case was doing. I think it is possible that this judge may be more interested in setting a precedent for computer privacy than with the mundane details of this divorce case. This is probably how the judge viewed things:
Someone hacked into another person’s email. Because they are husband and wife and because one of them thought the other was cheating is not justification and is irrelevant to this judge because he’s looking at the privacy part of the equation, not the emotional nasty divorce part. The law isn’t emotional.
Either you prosecute people for hacking or you don’t. The law has to be applied equally. If the law doesn’t apply to a guy who breaks into his wife’s email account to see if she’s cheating, how can you ask the court to apply it on your behalf to the guy who hacked into your email account and stole your credit card and bank account information? I think this is the point the judge is trying to make. If you want computer privacy laws enforced, you can’t cherry pick them because you feel sorry for this guy and think he was justified since his wife was really cheating on him. What if he hacked her email and found that she wasn’t cheating? Would we feel the same about the situation? If he thought she was cheating, he should have filed for divorce. If he wanted to, he could then have subpoenaed her computer records to prove his allegations of adultery. Instead he took the law into his own hands, which makes him a hacker. He could have gotten his proof through legal means.