McKinnon broke the law, admits it and says he would do it again. He downloaded flies, deleted others and left inflammatory messages, knocked out a Navy comms system which cost $70,000 to repair and swore to continue his activities. All this in the immediate wake of the September 11 attacks.
As such his guilt couldn't be clearer.
It's clear that the Court of Appeal didn't just rubber-stamp the extradition request - the judgement runs to more than 40 pages - and I'm sure that neither the judges nor the politicians in the UK actually want to see him hung out to dry. Their hands are tied, however. You can't suspend the rule of law for one person, however much of an arse they've been.
Unfortunately the UK does have an asymmetrical arrangement with the USA which means that, technically, he has to go across the Atlantic. He committed an offence (or even an offense) under US law, and the extradition treaty as signed and agreed means that the US can legitimately ask for him to stand trial in the US.
In the modern world you can't simply poke your tongue out and go 'ya boo' at agreements which both parties have signed and agreed, so poor Gary Nerd is stuffed, I'm afraid. The ultimate fault lies with governments of all stripes who have been so supine as to bend over since the 1940s and let the US royally roger them to maintain what they pathetically claim to be the 'special relationship' (as in 'special needs', I fear). As such, the the hands of justice in the UK are tied. It all makes for emotive headlines and 'why-o-why' stuff from the knee-jerk columnists, but that's the reality. And, to be honest, his frank admission of the crimes and his pledge to do it again makes even the asymmetrical nature of the extradition treaty irrelevant.
The 60 or 70 year sentence that has been touted is, I'm sure, just a bit of bravado and sabre-rattling on the part of the prosecutors, and I imagine that a first-round plea-bargain will see the poor bugger serving no more than a couple of years in a low-security unit. After all, McKinnon was originally offered a three-year term on a bargaining session in 2004 and told them to stuff it, and even though he is the architect of his own misfortunes, and Asperger's is not a grave enough condition to overturn the initial charge. It will doubtless (one hopes) play a major part in his mitigation when it comes to trial. I'm sure, giving his (subsequent diagnosis, a similar arrangement could and would be offered again. And not every US prison is like Alcatraz, Sing Sing or the Shawshank Redemption.
Of course, with hindsight, a far more sensible option would have been for the CPS to have brought a case against Gary Nerd right at the beginning and for the court to have given him community service (which is equivalent to a custodial sentence). That way the septics could have been told that he had already been tried and convicted, so the extradition was not applicable. But that's asking rather a lot of the CPS.
Still, it all makes good copy for the tabloids to launch one of their inchoate attacks of moral outrage.