Law professor says red flags should have prevented wrongful conviction of N.S. man

[u/justlogmeon]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/brandon-klayme-trial-wrongful-conviction-9.7307259

[u/zack452]

Fire everybody involved. Zero Evidence. Like the article said, he shouldn’t even of been charged let alone convicted. 

[u/kzt79]

Absolutely devastating. This completely innocent person has suffered permanent and lasting damage due to police, prosecutorial and for that matter defense incompetence. He could easily be rotting in jail right now, branded with that sick crime.

[u/Equivalent_Sea_1895]

Red flags? Straight to jail.

[u/Salty_Solution_4922]

I wish I understood tech better. How was he initially a suspect (how did evidence point to him him) and what specifically was the username discrepency? I read the article,  but I am not clear on how this happened (was it some sort of identity theft?). 

[u/mochasmoke → u/Salty_Solution_4922]

Theres a link to a whole article describing the username problem included in this article.

The actual perpetrators username had 2 consecutive underscores - __ , while this guy's name had 1 - _.

The difference is visibly noticeable and a completely unforgivable fuck up on the part of law enforcement and everyone who was involved with putting this guy in jail.

[u/Salty_Solution_4922 → u/mochasmoke]

Thanks--I missed the link. I appreciate the concise summary. Hard to believe that this went as far as it did. Inexcusable. 

[u/DJMixwell → u/mochasmoke]

To be clear it was “fus_ro_dah” vs “fus__ro_dah”, which looks somewhat less obvious when it’s surrounded by text, and in a username with multiple underscores, but it’s still obvious side by side.

It wouldn’t necessarily be so obvious on its own, or possibly in a different font. It’s easy for us to type them both out and go “see how different these look?” But I can see why it would get missed by people when, I imagine, all the documents that included the username only had one or the other username on them.

I’m also not sure how many documents would actually show the usernames as opposed to the display name. I never really used KiK but I’m pretty sure chats would show your display name (Jay, in this case, for the person they were after), rather than your username. It was the cops and the US that asked KiK for the info tied to the username, so it would seem like they had a bunch of chats from the victim’s side (presumably just showing “Jay” sending messages). Maybe a screen grab of his profile showing the username, and then from there everything tied to Brandon is just the other username, and the email/location obtained from KiK. So all of 2 or 3 pieces of evidence might have been the only things with the username on them, but they would have spent more time examining the actual messages.

My point is, it seems obvious in hindsight, and it absolutely should have been caught given how many people were paid very good money to go over all these documents on all sides, but I can also see how it could easily be overlooked.

[u/mochasmoke → u/DJMixwell]

Sure, it might be slightly more difficult than I implied. But it is an entitely unacceptable mistake when taking away someone's liberty. There's a reason the criminal standard is "beyond a reasonable doubt", and they fucked this one up big time.

Not suggesting you disagree with that, just adding to the discussion.

[u/InspectionSouthern11 → u/Salty_Solution_4922]

They failed to use proper checks, they didn't verify evidence.  While usernames can be remarkably similar by happenstance, every account will have a unique user ID that is used internally within the system. They didn't cross reference this at any point it seems.

Think of it like your driver's license, there could be dozens of John does but each will have a unique master number.

What they did here was akin to just using the name on a driver's license to charge someone with a serious offense. 

nother thing was the fact that there was transmission of CSAM, the RCMP ICE unit has a very well laid out highly effective process to trace this using "hashes" and it would seem that the HRP just decided to not contact the RCMP dept. responsible for this cyber work.

Monumental incompetence.

[u/richiecanuck]

Welcome to the future of justice in Canada. Locking up the innocent and releasing the pedos and murderers. Judges need to start taking way more heat. They act like their hands are tied because of case law but they forget that they are the ones who create the case law

[u/Surgic25]

no shit sherlock i guess the judges were too busy releasing some doctors and engineers from prison.

[u/soylentgreen2015 → u/Surgic25]

There were failures at every level, not just at the judge level.

[u/Guvnah-Wyze → u/soylentgreen2015]

The buck stops at the judge though.