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> 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

> 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.

crazygringo 3mo ago
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-quashes-dartmouth-mans-convictions-in-internet-luring-case-enters-acquittals 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.
- thephyber 3mo ago
  [flagged]
- nl 3mo ago
  > 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.
  - thephyber 3mo ago
    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 3mo ago
      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 3mo ago
        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 3mo ago
    The message history of what? Not his account name, the one they had throughout the investigation and trial.
  - crazygringo 3mo ago
    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.
- AnodicElegy 3mo ago
  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 3mo ago
    >Most people do. Why?
    - subarctic 3mo ago
      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.
    - AnodicElegy 3mo ago
      I imagine that the perception might be that a judge will approach the case more rationally and technically, whereas the jury might be swayed by sympathy for the victim, biases, etc. To what extent that's true I do not know, but conviction rates are significantly lower in Canada than in the U.S.
buckle8017 3mo ago
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.
40four 3mo ago
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.
shusaku 3mo ago
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 3mo ago
  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.
  - giantg2 3mo ago
    "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 3mo ago
      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 3mo ago
        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.
        voxic11 3mo ago
        But that is all speculation/opinion/non-first hand knowledge, you can't actually say any of those things in court without an expert witness. Only expert witnesses can testify to things that they didn't witness themselves, lawyers and lay witnesses cannot. Also don't think you can simply get the opposing expert witness to give this kind of testimony on cross examination. During cross examination you can only ask them about things they testified to during direct (and a few other things such as their qualifications). So if they never testified anything about your IP during direct then you can't ask them about whether or not your IP matched during cross. If you don't have the money to pay for an expert witness then you better just hope that the jury already knows about IP addresses and actually realizes that IP addresses matching was never brought up during the trial (they won't btw, the general public knows nothing about these things). Think about it this way, all this techno mumbo-jumbo about account IDs and IP addresses may as well be black magic as far as the jury and court is concerned. So only a verified expert witness can testify about them. If we allowed otherwise then every trial would be nothing but testimony about how various magical or religious principles mean that you can't possibly be guilty (or vice versa).
quantified 3mo ago
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 3mo ago
  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.
gregdaniels421 3mo ago
It is Canada so a decent amount of the process is different and more English than American.
jasonfarnon 3mo ago
"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 3mo ago
  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 3mo ago
    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 3mo ago
      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 3mo ago
stefantalpalaru 3mo ago
[dead]
gamblor956 3mo ago
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 3mo ago
  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.
  - dzhiurgis 3mo ago
    Wonder if there are expert witnesses in videogame niche. I have no idea what you are talking about.
    - bryanrasmussen 3mo ago
      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?
    - oersted 3mo ago
      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.
codetiger 3mo ago
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_ 3mo ago
  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?
  - odo1242 3mo ago
    Tunnel vision, probably
    - codetiger 3mo ago
      "Tunnel vision" sounds too positive for this context.
  - codetiger 3mo ago
    In LLM (AI) terms, we call the same effect as "models are hallucinating".
    - Dilettante_ 3mo ago
      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.
anigbrowl 3mo ago
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.
protocolture 3mo ago
>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.
dzhiurgis 3mo ago
> Unless the article left something out I'd be sus of anyone who has a kik account to begin with...
SZJX 3mo ago
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.
- deltoidmaximus 3mo ago
  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.
- DoctorOetker 3mo ago
  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.
phyzix5761 3mo ago
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 3mo ago
  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.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  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 3mo ago
    Other than misplaced nihilism what's your point?
    - inigyou 3mo ago
      The justice system isn't the only thing that randomly kills you.
      - sirsinsalot 3mo ago
        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 3mo ago
        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
ahoka 3mo ago
How could they prove the possession?
nickitolas 3mo ago
A reddit user ( https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1v6ehm6/comment/ozrmzzn/ https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1v6ehm6/comment/ozrmz... ) shared this link to the sentencing decision https://canlii.ca/t/k2frf 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?
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
Tangurena2 3mo ago
This is one of those crimes where the accusation is the conviction.

crazygringo 3mo ago

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-quashes-dartmouth-mans-convictions-in-internet-luring-case-enters-acquittals 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.

thephyber 3mo ago
[flagged]
nl 3mo ago
> 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.
- thephyber 3mo ago
  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 3mo ago
    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 3mo ago
      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 3mo ago
  The message history of what? Not his account name, the one they had throughout the investigation and trial.
- crazygringo 3mo ago
  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.
AnodicElegy 3mo ago
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 3mo ago
  >Most people do. Why?
  - subarctic 3mo ago
    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.
  - AnodicElegy 3mo ago
    I imagine that the perception might be that a judge will approach the case more rationally and technically, whereas the jury might be swayed by sympathy for the victim, biases, etc. To what extent that's true I do not know, but conviction rates are significantly lower in Canada than in the U.S.

buckle8017 3mo ago

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.

40four 3mo ago

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.

shusaku 3mo ago

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 3mo ago
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.
- giantg2 3mo ago
  "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 3mo ago
    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 3mo ago
      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.
      - voxic11 3mo ago
        But that is all speculation/opinion/non-first hand knowledge, you can't actually say any of those things in court without an expert witness. Only expert witnesses can testify to things that they didn't witness themselves, lawyers and lay witnesses cannot. Also don't think you can simply get the opposing expert witness to give this kind of testimony on cross examination. During cross examination you can only ask them about things they testified to during direct (and a few other things such as their qualifications). So if they never testified anything about your IP during direct then you can't ask them about whether or not your IP matched during cross. If you don't have the money to pay for an expert witness then you better just hope that the jury already knows about IP addresses and actually realizes that IP addresses matching was never brought up during the trial (they won't btw, the general public knows nothing about these things). Think about it this way, all this techno mumbo-jumbo about account IDs and IP addresses may as well be black magic as far as the jury and court is concerned. So only a verified expert witness can testify about them. If we allowed otherwise then every trial would be nothing but testimony about how various magical or religious principles mean that you can't possibly be guilty (or vice versa).

quantified 3mo ago

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 3mo ago
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.

gregdaniels421 3mo ago

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

jasonfarnon 3mo ago

"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 3mo ago
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 3mo ago
  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 3mo ago
    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 3mo ago

stefantalpalaru 3mo ago

[dead]

gamblor956 3mo ago

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 3mo ago
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.
- dzhiurgis 3mo ago
  Wonder if there are expert witnesses in videogame niche. I have no idea what you are talking about.
  - bryanrasmussen 3mo ago
    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?
  - oersted 3mo ago
    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.

codetiger 3mo ago

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_ 3mo ago
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?
- odo1242 3mo ago
  Tunnel vision, probably
  - codetiger 3mo ago
    "Tunnel vision" sounds too positive for this context.
- codetiger 3mo ago
  In LLM (AI) terms, we call the same effect as "models are hallucinating".
  - Dilettante_ 3mo ago
    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.

anigbrowl 3mo ago

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.

protocolture 3mo ago

>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.

dzhiurgis 3mo ago

> Unless the article left something out I'd be sus of anyone who has a kik account to begin with...

SZJX 3mo ago

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.

deltoidmaximus 3mo ago
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.
DoctorOetker 3mo ago
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.

phyzix5761 3mo ago

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 3mo ago
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.
inigyou 3mo ago
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 3mo ago
  Other than misplaced nihilism what's your point?
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    The justice system isn't the only thing that randomly kills you.
    - sirsinsalot 3mo ago
      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 3mo ago
        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

ahoka 3mo ago

How could they prove the possession?

nickitolas 3mo ago

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

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

Tangurena2 3mo ago

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