I think it's a pretty rough penalty even if he was in the wrong. His intentions were in the right place and people don't always think straight in these situations. I had a friend who found a human skull when hiking and picked it up and put it in his back pack and actually carried it back to our house so we could confirm it was in fact a human skull (f-ing thing stunk). The police gave him a royal bollocking for moving it, but they didn't charge him with tampering or anything, which they could have. His intentions were in the right place, he was just an idiot.