[Aurornis]

> Nothing linked Klayme to the girl. No intimate images were found. Klayme did have a Kik account, but cops couldn’t even show that he had accessed the service during the period in question.

> Still, Klayme was arrested and hit with three charges:

> Luring a person under 14 years of age by means of telecommunication

> Providing sexually explicit material to a child

> Possession of child pornography

> The case went to trial, where Klayme was found guilty. He then went to prison for 18 months.

What in the world happened in this case?

How can someone be convicted of these charges without any evidence?

Unless the article left something out, the only possible evidence they had was the wrong username. They couldn't even find evidence that this person used Kik at the time of the crime.

What defense did his lawyer even try? I'm so confused.

[shusaku]

It all comes down to the jury, none of those things matter. The bigger issue here: he knew those messages weren’t him, so the lawyer should’ve gone full force to figure out how this happened. I would guess his lawyer didn’t really believe him

[thephyber]

It was a judge, not a jury.

And yeah, the trial lawyer failed to make the case, but if the defendant couldn't raise money for a defense, they he likely didn't have any experts to refute the prosecution's evidence.

[qingcharles]

I don't know about the Canadian justice system, but it's very hard in the USA for defendants to get expert witnesses. The state is supposed to pay, but it's almost never done, and when it is they pay bottom rate for the defendant while having unlimited funds for their own experts.

[OsrsNeedsf2P]

Oh something I can comment on!

A friend of mine was facing a mountain of criminal charges. Photo evidence proved the cops lied. We needed an expert testimony explaining the camera angle and why the photo explained how the cops lied.

I think we called every service qualified for providing such a testimony in Ontario, and a good portion of them across all of Canada. Some were even happy to work with us, until they found out we were testifying against the police. We ended up going international but without luck, and ended up with no expert testimony

[pinkmuffinere]

> I think we called every service qualified for providing such a testimony in Ontario, and a good portion of them across all of Canada. Some were even happy to work with us, until they found out we were testifying against the police. We ended up going international but without luck, and ended up with no expert testimony

This is absolutely horrible to hear!! I know you probably don't want homework, but would you ever consider taking this story to news outlets? I suspect there'd be no compensation, but the uproar might (eventually) result in change.

[leni536]

This is insane. I guess this is because of economic incentives, and expert witnesses risk losing work coming from prosecutors if they ever testify against them?

[thephyber]

Interesting.

I was actually dismissed from a jury panel partially because I said I don't know if I could trust the experts because my perception is that individual experts either repeatedly testify for only the prosecution or only the defense.

[e40]

You can’t leave is hanging like that! What happened?

[mothballed]

There are a gazillion federal prosecutions in the US that go something like

1) Pile of evidence that someone is guilty.

2) Federal "expert witness" allowed and funded to testify it points to X person

3) Defense is broke

4) If defense not broke, judge finds reason why defense expert witness can't present their full argument

5) Prosecution offers plea deal or a gazillion years in jail

6) Person folds when they realize none of their defense is allowed or will be funded, or goes to trial and gets a gazillion years for daring to go to trial.

If you already have a pile of evidence for a crime and an expert witnesses you can keep piling on it's not much of a stretch to dump it on some random person, as we saw here, quite easy actually.

[expedition32]

Weird in my country we have a culture were scientists love going after eachother- its what they live for! Nothing gives you more fame than destroying other people's reputation.

And overturning convictions gets you straight into the history books. It gets so ridiculous that people make their life work out of redoing cases from the 90s.

[thephyber]

Overturning convictions presumes that the defendant was wrongfully convicted and that the scientist has the technical skill which is relevant in the case.

The problem is that these intersecting conditions make the number of relevant cases small, while having experts testify for defendants for cheap during mundane cases has MUCH higher demand.

[nightowlnetwork]

If you dont mind, which country is that?

[throw383949]

Canadian justice system is under stronge pressure to bring rate of conviction up. Only 0.001% rapist end in prison and bs like that.

Some corners must be cut, to reach quotas!

[thephyber]

Rape is unfortunately a difficult crime to prove compared to lots of other crimes.

But I also suspect your statistic is not accurate and designed to make your point, not represent reality.

[notabotiswear]

Uh, how many rapists do you guys have trolling about to even manage to produce a percentage like that?

[throw1234567891]

Judging by how many children bodies they find under old orphanage sites, too many.

[giantg2]

"he likely didn't have any experts to refute the prosecution's evidence."

What evidence? They didn't have any other than a user name. An arm chair lawyer who watched too many shows could have created reasonable doubt.

[bizzletk]

But in a trial room, that evidence was 100% there:

> Prosecution: Mister Klayme, the criminal messages were sent from a Kik username called "fus ro dah". What's your Kik username?

> Klayme: It's "fus ro dah".

> Prosecution: It logically follows that Mister Klayme was the sender, and is therefore guilty of the offense.

[giantg2]

And the reasonable doubt would come from someone else could have used my account, does the service's account ID match the account ID for my user name, nothing was found on my devices, did the IPs match my known IPs, when did the access take place vs where was I, etc.

[thephyber]

Your comment was already asked and answered several times in this HN post.

There was evidence of a crime, only the Kik account ownership evidence was thin. Any decent lawyer would have probed into that aspect of the case, but there are lots of comments here about failures of defense / prosecution / experts / legal system.

[jibal]

They had the exchange with a minor from an account that everyone -- including the defense -- believed to be Klayme's. His only counterargument was that his email had been hacked, which was not true and not the correct explanation.

But what they didn't have is any independent evidence that Klayme had sent the messages or even that he had access to the account that sent them. If they had looked at the IP address from which the messages were sent, they would have seen that it wasn't his and was in a distant geographic location.

[ralferoo]

Residential proxies exist. Even if they had picked up that the IP was from somewhere else, a decent lawyer could probably have been able to convince a jury that just showed intent because he was trying to conceal his IP.

[giantg2]

You'd have to show some evidence that he did conceal his IP, otherwise there should still be reasonable doubt. You can make up whatever you want without evidence, proving it is different.

[jibal]

You're talking nonsense. Among other things, had either the prosecution or the defense seen that the IP addresses didn't match, they would have pursued it further. "The IP addresses don't match but that just proves that the defendant tried to hide their IP address" is a ridiculous corrupt argument, one that a decent prosecutor would never make ... please do not ever serve on a jury.

[throw101010]

> I would guess his lawyer didn’t really believe him

Then you'd ask to change lawyer. If they can apply a standard practice of care and do basic checks like matching a username and time of use because they don't "believe" you when you say these are not you messages, they are not doing their job as a lawyer.

I'd go as far as saying such basic checks not being done amount to negligence/malpractice, they might have a civil case against that lawyer.

[bizzletk]

But the lawyer would say "okay, help me prove you didn't send these messages"

We know he's innocent, and he knows he's innocent, but how does he prove it?

[jibal]

He doesn't have to prove that he didn't send them ... that's the prosecution's burden. (In the U.S. ... I know nothing about Canadian law.) But a competent lawyer could figure out how to prove it: get ahold of the IP address from which the messages were sent. Oh look, it was in California! (The IP address they had was from the email address with which Klayme had registered his Kik account with the mistranscribed name.)

Also a competent lawyer would have done a scrupulous audit of the chain of reasoning that led to his client, which would have revealed the username mixup.

[fortran77]

This is Canada. That may not be possible.

[codetiger]

This case can be the best example of human hallucinations. They made a mistake in username, and assumed everything after that was facts. All that had to be proved was the person is the owner of the mistaken username.

[Dilettante_]

There should be/does anyone know if there is a name for this? When you truth-check exactly once and then just blindly runaway after that?

Edit: Apparently in medicine there exists the concept of "premature closure", where the carer settles on a diagnosis early and stops considering other possibilities. Seems like a decent match?

[codetiger]

In LLM (AI) terms, we call the same effect as "models are hallucinating".

[Dilettante_]

I did understand that analogy from your first comment, because I have neither been living under a rock for the past few years nor suffered a heavy concussion minutes before making my reply.

That may seem needlessly harshly worded, but I wanted to very bluntly tell you to not expect/treat your fellow commenters like they are pants-on-head stupid.

My intention with GP was finding a good term for this failure to question oneself. That's not even strictly what hallucinations in the context of LLM mean in common discourse, which would be more along the lines of meaning both the (mechanism of) production of the wrong info in the first place, as well as (more implicitly and softly) that propensity to fail to question themselves. You would have understood that, if your model of my ability to understand had been more generous.

[codetiger]

Sorry if I sounded to you like assuming fellow commenters like that, but that was not my intention. As you were bringing up medical terms, I was trying to set the context clearly for my previous comment.

[Hackbraten]

Sounds like confirmation bias to me.

[odo1242]

Tunnel vision, probably

[codetiger]

"Tunnel vision" sounds too positive for this context.

[jasonfarnon]

"the only possible evidence they had was the wrong username."

Out of curiosity and definitely not defending this prosecution, but if the chain "unique Kik username -> unique gmail address -> unique ISP user -> guy living alone, happens to have Kik on his device" weren't screwed up by the investigators submitting the wrong username, would you say that's enough for a jury to convict ? I don't know about Canada but in the US at least no judge would step in and say that's not enough for a jury to convict on. Convictions happen based on he said/she said. In fact that's probably what this boiled down to. The defense isn't hiring a computer expert to dispute the chain "validated" by Kik/google/etc. unless the guy is rich. They probably accepted that as fact and just argued it wasn't him using the account. And everyone charged with this type of crime says "It must have been someone else on my computer."

[jojobas]

No, there are open wifi routers, there are WPA attacks, friends that were given wifi passwords, and a lot of other things. Convicting on IP address match should disqualify the trial judge.

[anigbrowl]

Judges generally do not evaluate the quality of evidence. Unless the defense challenges, it's assumed that the prosecutions claims are founded in fact. It doesn't matter if the prosecution alleges you did six impossible things before breakfast unless the defense disputes these allegations.

[jojobas]

A judge that has no reasonable doubt with this sort of evidence has no business being a judge.

We don't know what defense did in this trial but not picking up on the username mismatch and the assumed non-challenge of the evidence is telling as well.

[anigbrowl]

In an adversarial system (which the US and Canada and UK are), the judge is not supposed to challenge evidence unless it's glaringly, obviously adrift from reality. That's the job of the defense lawyer. In civil law systems the roles of the judge and prosecutor are combined and responsility for bad decisions is distributed differently.

[DoctorOetker]

a simple law could mandate that attribution chains presented as evidence (by either party) MUST recursively include a header reminding everyone about this law (so that ALL defendant, plaintif, their lawyers and the judge & jury if applicable), the law being for example:

1) the username must be introduced as " the <N>-character user name <username> at the <M>-character online platform <platform> ..." along with a cryptographic hash of the concatenation, of user name, service name, ... so that any alteration is easily noticed.

2) a histogram of usernames binned by Damerau-Levenstein edit distance, along with a tabular cumulative count so that everyone can comfortably read off how many other but similar user names this platform has less than 1 edit away, less than 2 edits away, less than 3 edits away etc...

3) the law should introduce a bet between law enforcement and corporations: upon being requested for the other half of a forensic link (say an IP address, or an email address, ...), it must demand the exact number of characters, it must provide a list or at least a cumulative count of user names less than N edits away. if they are ever caught violating user privacy they owe money to the state, the individual, ... even if law enforcement demanded out of band cooperation. The corporation should financially feel the risk of prosecution / police making invalid requests, so they have an incentive to technologically think ahead of the police and their sloppy work.

> In an adversarial system (which the US and Canada and UK are), the judge is not supposed to challenge evidence unless it's glaringly, obviously adrift from reality.

So regardless of common law vs civil law systems, one could devise laws such that this type of errors could be made glaringly clear to anyone involved, by law.

It's not like the first time humanity is confronted with misattribution. If a phenomenon has a word, its typically been happening for a long time. If the laws haven't been adjusted to learn from mistakes, it's not because they don't want to learn, but because they want to not learn.

[jojobas]

The prosecution must still present evidence that proves guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

"Something something IP address" sort of evidence that the article describes doesn't seem to cut it.

[irishcoffee]

I am curious if you’ve ever met a judge. Every single one I’ve known was a giant, arrogant, jackass. They aren’t actually (generally) interested in being good at their job, they just like the idea.

[victorbjorklund]

Happens all the time. You have to then say ”the ip address does not prove it because X”. If prosecutor have a photo of you committing the murder it is enough evidence. But then maybe you will say ”that isn’t me. That’s photoshopped” and then court needs to evaluate if that can be the case or not. But if you don’t give any plausible explanation to the photo it will be used against you.

[vintermann]

> happens to have Kik on his device

That would have been (highly likely) true by construction, after all the single underscore username did exist. The only case it wouldn't have been true is if they deleted the app but not their account I guess.

[jasonfarnon]

"That would have been (highly likely) true by construction"

You're assuming people knew what evidence to question. That is having the kik app on his device isn't evidence against the claim that "kik didn't return the wrong guys username". Of course it's evidence in support of what he was accused of.

[nimonian]

_Exactly_.

Both the article and the parent comment treat "happens to have Kik account" as an independent discovery that affects our Bayesian inference.

No. The innocent was identified exactly _because_ they have a Kik account, so the conditional probability they have a Kik account is 1.

[jasonfarnon]

No. If the target of your "Bayesian inference" is whether the chain kik->gmail->ISP is reliable, then it isn't independent evidence. But that isn't the same as the target of inference in court, which is guilt or innocence, and obviously having kik is additional evidence for that. As I mentioned, the chain kik->gmail->ISP would not even be disputed in a run-of-the-mill accusation in the US, any more than DNA evidence gets scrutinized for lab mix-ups. You would need expensive attorneys and experts for that.

[benj111]

If it wouldn't happen today, it's only because the US has a long history of doing this, mainly to black people.

Youre more confident that it doesn't still happen than I am though.

[phyzix5761]

As a software engineer the legal system scares me. How can we put someone in jail (for the rest of their lives in some cases) based on nebulous rules and personal interpretation/application of the law?

[benj111]

As a person it should scare you.

Unfortunately this isn't unusual, well except it actually being accepted that he was innocent after the fact.

[cucumber3732842]

You think criminal law is bad just wait until you hear about civil/administrative enforcement.

We steal people's life work, destroy livelihoods, etc, etc, on far, far far flimsier grounds.

[tekla]

It's scary that people think being a software engineer makes them an expert in law

[inigyou]

Worse, several people will have an aortic dissection tomorrow. Their main arteries will split apart and they will just die from internal bleeding. And the next day, and the next day, and the next day. But only until next week because that's when false vacuum decay will get us.

[sirsinsalot]

Other than misplaced nihilism what's your point?

[inigyou]

The justice system isn't the only thing that randomly kills you.

[sirsinsalot]

Right, and...?

Just because many things can do something doesn't negate a discussion about one of the things. Your point (which it barely is one) isn't really interesting or useful.

[mothballed]

It effectively does for the average person person. You think you have a tiny ability to change or influence it, when in fact you do not, at least not while exercising the range of options and risk you find acceptable*. It is not of much different design today than during the Salem Witch Trials, 300 years ago, and sits in the one branch of government with next to zero democratic levers of control. The justice system is effectively a natural disaster or act of god to the typical person.

Most people harm themselves more by considering it anything more than a fixed system to be calculated against, bashing their head into a wall for no gain.

* To the typical HN user

[gregdaniels421]

It is Canada so a decent amount of the process is different and more English than American.

[SZJX]

The crusade and strong Western societal taboo/moral panic on this topic clearly massively cloud people’s judgments (e.g. Chat Control in the EU), unfortunately.

[DoctorOetker]

I believe its orthogonal to what you refer to as moral panic:

Every day the legal process dragged on, every day this defendant sat in prison, was a day the real perpetrator wasn't recognized, wasn't prevented from harming more victims. Now what you refer to as a moral panic turns out to have interests aligned with the falsely convicted defendant.

Any further harm suffered by victims of the perpetrator should be entitled to sue the police / prosecution, suppose such further harm happened:

as I understood, for a person / entity to be co-liable theoretically requires:

* the person / entity having faulted

* a causal connection between the fault and resulting damages

Please don't push on the basis of what position you consider yourself more or less likely to find yourself in, but push on the basis of what you believe may help prevent false positives and false negatives.

[deltoidmaximus]

I've seen people argue for lowering burdens of proof for particularly heinous crimes and seemingly unaware they're arguing from a position of rage and need for revenge.

[Tangurena2]

This is one of those crimes where the accusation is the conviction.

[anigbrowl]

An unfortunate fact about the legal system is that it's much easier for lawyers to sway a jury based on emotions than facts. simply labeling someone as a child abuser and then recounting a sordid tale is enough to get most people to switch off their rational faculties completely. Another unfortunate fact is many defense attorneys start work from the premise that the client is both guilty and an idiot, accepting the facts as alleged and trying to develop a counter-narrative that legally excuses or at least mitigates them. Protestations about the validity of the factual allegations are evaluated as legal arguments, with the implicit assumption that the police work will stand up to examination and that challenging it will alienate the jury even more than the initial allegations.

To my mind this is a by-product of legal education, where lawyers are tasked with identifying precedential or logical flaws in an opponent's argument rather than considering the entire set of circumstances. Answering 'First, I would examine all the evidence to make sure it was correct that the police did not make mistakes...' will not earn you any points on a typical law school exam; it's regarded as similar to disputing the givens on a logic or philosophy problem. I don't know about Canadian law specifically, but in US law appeals revolve solely around legal issues and the facts adduced at trial are assumed to be correct by default; you can't appeal on the basis that the facts were wrong or that the evidence was lacking, but must go on the basis that the wrong legal conclusion was drawn from the evidence in question or that your attorney failed to represent you properly (which requires you to explain why you didn't fire them at an earlier stage).

If I ever found myself wrongly accused I would never, ever go for a jury trial but ask for a bench trial instead, where the judge is the sole decider. Unlike a jury, a judge has to write out the reasoning for the decision. (It's sad that even here, the judge failed to notice the discrepancy in the evidence.) And if a defense attorney proposed to go on some other basis than the correctness of the facts I would seek to replace them immediately, even if this meant a longer period of pretrial detention. Most people go along with bad defense strategies because the carceral process is so demoralizing that they want to escape it as quickly as possible, even at the price of pleading guilty or letting the defense counsel field the wrong sort of argument. Even when someone is certain of their innocence like this defendant, starting a fight with one's own lawyer (who might be their only friend in the world if the accusation is lurid or grave enough) is often too scary for a defendant to imagine.

I'm curious (but not optimistic) as to whether anyone in the police, prosecution, or judiciary will face any consequences for their carelessness in this case beyond slower promotion. It's also unclear how the state intends to make the unfortunate defendant whole beyond declaring him the the victim of a procedural error. Compensation in such cases is usually calculated around loss of expected earnings; since it's hard to put a price on the loss of liberty, dignity, safety, or sanity those deficits are usually accorded some fixed nominal value, which tends to be on the low side. For example, the Federal government in the US pays $50,000 per year of imprisonment and $100,000 per year on death row; states have their own formulas and I assume things are approximately similar in Canada. Personally, I don't think $75,000 is adequate compensation for 1.5 years in prison on a child sex crime charge, which notoriously puts a convict at a much higher risk of violence from other prisoners than crimes involving property or ordinary violence.

[gblargg]

Why would people get jury trials if bench ones were better? Is it only when the person is innocent?

[bryanrasmussen]

do people ever do anything that is less beneficial than an alternative?

If the system is railroading you, the judge looks like another member of the system.

If you did it but believe that a jury will decide the law is unjust then you may go for jury nullification. A judge is not going to give you that.

In the U.S you might want to push as far as you can before accepting a plea, based on the idea that the prosecutor will offer better terms the closer it comes to trial. Under these conditions jury trials are more expensive, take longer, and may offer more uncertainty. Therefore ask for jury trial if your strategy is to get improved terms for plea.

In other words, there are reasons why jury trials would be better. There are reasons why people might think that jury trials would be better. However if your thing is about realizing the evidence is a bunch of crap and the charge is something that might emotionally cause people to want to see someone suffer you might want to take a bench trial, because hopefully judges should be able to see through crap evidence.

[tancop]

because they think jury trials work the way they are supposed to work.

the system is broken because juries are not required (or even allowed) to explain their decision, and the selection process is not that good at removing bias. thats how you get cases where the jury is racist or not following the law.

but the idea of using a group decision instead of individual is great, and the jurors not being judges/lawyers avoids professional deformation. if selection was completely fair the system would work as intended but thats not really possible with the way it is now.

[GJim]

> selection process is not that good at removing bias

I'd say it introduces bias.

Here in Blighty, jury selection is *entirely* random. A juror is only going to be 'deselected' in extremis; for example, it turns out they are related to the prosecution or defendant.

[nickitolas]

A reddit user ( https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1v6ehm6/comment/ozrmz... ) shared this link to the sentencing decision https://canlii.ca/t/k2frf

Some interesting bits I found in it:

> The police also retrieved one voicemail message from CH’s iPhone that was sent to her by “Jay,” with a timestamp of December 13, 2018, at 7:40:54 PM (UTC-6), which was played in court.

So it sounds like they played audio of the actual perpetrator's voice in court, and no one realized it was a completely different person.

> In the final analysis, the key issue in the trial was whether the Crown had established, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Mr. Brandon Klayme was, in fact, “Jay” and that he was the person who had sent her the sexually explicit text messages and had demanded and received sexually explicit photos and videos of CH, who was at the time that those images were exchanged, only 12 years old.

Funny (sad?) that the judge literally says he established this "beyond a reasonable doubt".

> The Court ultimately concluded on the basis of the totality of direct and circumstantial evidence accepted by the Court that the Crown had established, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Mr. Brandon Klayme was, at all material times, the person who identified himself as “Jay” and furthermore that, he was the person with whom CH had been communicating over several weeks in sexually explicit messaging and that he had demanded that CH send sexually explicit photos and videos of her, being a 12-year-old girl, to him. The Crown’s direct and circumstantial evidence included numerous references to the IP addresses and other information for accounts such as Google+, Google, Kik which referred to different usernames, like ““Jay” with their subscriber contact being listed as Mr. Brandon Klayme.

I barely know anything about law, but all of this sounds like "circumstantial" evidence, not direct?

> The Court received a Pre-Sentence Report (PSR) prepared by the Probation Officer on July 21, 2023, which indicated that Mr. Klayme, is now 28 years old, single and continues to live at home at his parent’s house. The PSR notes that Mr. Brandon Klayme has a very close relationship with his parents and siblings, is not currently involved in a relationship and also reported that he has never been in one.

> The PSR notes that Mr. Klayme completed grade 12 in 2013, but he advised the Probation Officer that he did not care about school and often was in trouble for not paying attention in class. He has not continued his education, but in terms of future education goals, Mr. Klayme indicated that, in the future, he would like to take a program in sound engineering. Mr. Klayme is presently unemployed, and his employment experience was with the family business and working with his father after graduating from grade 12. He has been unemployed since the family business was sold over one year ago. As a result, he is financially dependent on his parents.

> Mr. Klayme reported that he has good health and that he had been diagnosed with ADHD as a child but took prescription medication to address those issues. He does not use any intoxicating substances but may have a drink on a few special occasions each year. He described himself as being a “very calm person” and has never attended any form of counselling.

> The Probation Officer noted that, during her interview with Mr. Klayme, he presented as being polite, respectful, and cooperative, but took no responsibility and maintained that he was innocent and repeatedly cited that his “email account had been hacked.”

> With respect to those comments in the PSR, at the conclusion of the sentencing submissions, the Court offered Mr. Klayme the opportunity to make any comments directly to the Court or for that matter, any comments directed towards CH or LS, who had remained on the videoconference throughout the hearing on December 18, 2023. Mr. Klayme stated that he was sorry to hear what had happened to CH and her family, but maintained, as he had stated to the Probation Officer, that they were occasioned by another person and not by him.

So it would seem the defense's claim was "He must have been hacked, since he didnt do any of these things". Which, while wrong (He wasn't hacked, they just mixed up two different accounts), I don't see how they could argue that he wasn't hacked?

Like, if we assume in a different case that a person was indeed hacked, and a third party got access to their "kik" account. Would it not be a very similar situation?

[quantified]

It would take anyone reviewing the evidence noticing the double underscore. Part of what makes this infuriating is that it's the type of error we as individuals are prone to making or not noticing on some days.

As the defendant, I'd have been terrified that all this seems to be me yet isn't.

[RichEO]

The double underscore error was made on the subpoena/request to Kik, and may not have appeared in the evidence at all.

If the request was made before the defendant was charged, it’s entirely possible that the defendant’s lawyer was not given that document until it was expressly requested.

[buckle8017]

Canadian prosecutors tend to bring charges with no basis in law or reality fairly frequently.

The conviction rate Canada wide is only like 50% because so many absurd cases are brought to trial.

[ahoka]

How could they prove the possession?

[protocolture]

>How can someone be convicted of these charges without any evidence?

The evidence would have been the sworn testimony of the cyber cop who screwed it up.

[gamblor956]

Unless the article left something out, the only possible evidence they had was the wrong username.

It did. The evidence against him were the messages sent to the girl and the unusual username. It's not like it was John_Smith. It was fairly unique.

They couldn't even find evidence that this person used Kik at the time of the crime.

The lack of digital evidence is not proof of innocence. It's not proof of anything either way.

the wrong username

It's very likely the extra underscore was simply glossed over, the way a double space is glossed over. Lawyers aren't generally known for their grasp of computer technology. The lawyer probably saw this a hundred times, thought it was a typo on the subpoena, and didn't put two-and-two together to realize that it was material. After all, the employee at the website could have made the same error but in reverse; assuming that the double underscore was a typo. It's not on the judge, as the judge doesn't go through every piece of evidence checking all the typos; they take the evidence at face value and evaluate its probative value.

[oersted]

It’s not an unusual username, it is actually quite unoriginal, there are probably thousands of users with variations of the same name.

It is the name of the headline magic ability in Skyrim, which is probably among the top ten most popular videogames of the last 25 years.

[ButlerianJihad]

Since the introduction of the Skyrim game in 2011, UrbanDictionary has also indicated that the specific phrase is a term for fellatio. Just sayin'

[dzhiurgis]

Wonder if there are expert witnesses in videogame niche. I have no idea what you are talking about.

[oersted]

I understand that certain segments of the population have remained completely disassociated from videogames, and that's fine, but that doesn't make it a niche or an expert topic.

Games make significantly more money than movies and TV now. More than 65M people bought Skyrim, and many more millions would recognise Fus-Ro-Dah just from spending time on the Internet anywhere near to gaming circles.

The defendant could have told their lawyer and it would have been trivial to research and demonstrate. Not sure what went wrong there.

[dzhiurgis]

> Games make significantly more money than movies and TV now

Don't wanna accuse you of anything, but why would you assume thats an important metric for HN populace. I assume most people here don't own a TV to begin with (personal projection obvs).

[dafelst]

It's a proxy for reach, which is what GP is talking about.

[bryanrasmussen]

I have not idea either, other than I understand it is a common text from a really popular video game. Why wouldn't variations of that be a really common username?

[DoctorOetker]

oh no please no, not videogame experts in court...

just be sane and force any Cyber attribution link in testimony to present in standardized form (with reference to find explanation) Damerau-Lehvenstein edit distance histogram, cumulative distribution, etc.

So that all parties (defendant & lawyers, plaintif & lawyers, judge or if applicable also jury) can trivially read and interpret the data:

On this platform we also have 4 users exactly 1 edit away, 15 users exactly 2 edits away,... On this platform we thus also have 4 other users 1 or fewer edits away, 19 users 2 or fewer edits away, ...

And I assure you Klayme or whomever would have read this part of the testimony over and over, and pushing his lawyers towards the right questions, that is if they allow themselves to work in the interest of their client, which usually they refuse to do, and just submit straw-man arguments intentionally because everybody wants to go home or have shorter workdays so prosecution and defense lawyers just pre-judge how the cookie should be crumbled, and then nobody has to read anything...

[xigoi]

> The lack of digital evidence is not proof of innocence.

A claim made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

[imtringued]

If you knew anything about the Skyrim community you would know that it is one of the most generic names possible on the level of John_Smith, possibly even more generic.

It is kind of like naming yourself after a meme or "lol".

[jibal]

> It was fairly unique.

Wrong.

And in any case, if they had looked at the message history of the account name that they used to track him down and that was entered into evidence at the trial, they would not have found any criminal messages.

> The lack of digital evidence is not proof of innocence.

Misplaced burden of proof.

> Lawyers aren't generally known for their grasp of computer technology.

Good lawyers are known for mastering the relevant details of a wide range of subjects.

[40four]

I wouldn’t think to much more on it if I were you. It’s not just this article. I’ve been getting the same feeling with other Arstechnica articles that recently trended on HN, so I think I’ll just pass when I see them for a while.

[dzhiurgis]

> Unless the article left something out

I'd be sus of anyone who has a kik account to begin with...

[crazygringo]

Yes, this is an atrocious article.

It makes no sense as presented.

The first thing the records should have shown was the full messaging history which would not have contained any of the incriminating messages.

But even if the messages no longer existed, there was no actual evidence. Truly, what on earth did the defense argue? How on earth was the jury convinced he was guilty?

Everything important about this story is missing from the article.

Edit: from another article, it seems like the conviction was made by a trial judge, and didn't even involve a jury: https://www.saltwire.com/nova-scotia/halifax/appeal-court-qu...

A single judge just decided that "his guilt was the only reasonable conclusion available". Scary. I like a lot of things about Canada, but I'm somewhat horrified at the idea that you can be sent to prison without a jury trial.

[AnodicElegy]

For all but minor offences in Canada, you have the right to a jury trial. Here, the accused elected to be tried by a judge. Most people do.

[gruez]

>Most people do.

Why?

[subarctic]

Maybe he or his lawyers thought he would fare better with a judge? Hard to say. I've heard that there are a lot fewer jury trial in Canada vs US but I'm not sure why.

[nl]

> The first thing the records should have shown was the full messaging history which would not have contained any of the incriminating messages.

I think the point is that the message history would show incriminating messages.

He'd have been saying "this isn't me", but somehow no one noticed it was the wrong username.

[crazygringo]

No, the message history wouldn't.

Because the message history was for his actual account, not the criminal's account.

The whole point is that they looked up the wrong username. And when they looked it up, they found an innocent man's identity, but didn't bother to look at the message history, which would not have had any of the messages.

Which is super-weird, because if he'd been messaging this one child, you'd think they'd be looking at all of his messages to find potential messages with other children. And then immediately noticing the lack of the messages that started the investigation in the first place.

[thephyber]

You are right, but your parent is right too.

If the police logged into his Kik account from his device, they would have seen the lack of connection to the case. If they simply trusted the Kik account contents from the subpoena response, then it was up to the defendant/experts to identify the issue and rebut the evidence.

[dzhiurgis]

IDK if you know much about kik but the only way this makes any sense is - I suspect he might have had other incriminating messages on his actual account he chose not to reveal.

[thephyber]

That is a hazard of the way evidence is collected for cases. If the state has a warrant and they find evidence of another crime while executing the warrant, that might be used to bring more charges. I don't know enough about law to know under what conditions it may be used or must be ignored.

But also, I read the article where it said that no corroborating evidence of any crime was found when searching his house or devices, so I suspect his Kik account is not likely to be full of illegal content if his other possessions weren't.

[jibal]

The message history of what? Not his account name, the one they had throughout the investigation and trial.