38 pointsby walrus0112 hours ago11 comments
  • duxupan hour ago
    >While the girl had described to police the physical features of the man with whom she had been communicating, court documents said investigators were unable to conduct a detailed interview with her because she was receiving medical care due to a deep depression.

    So they couldn't actually communicate with the accuser? That seems like basic 6th amendment violation.

    Meanwhile the only connection is "this username used this IP" and nothing else?

    Even just a little follow up where someone actually pastes the username in somewhere to search and finds nothing and gets curious would seem to uncover all this.

    This seems absurdly little to even get to a trial with...

  • therealdrag02 hours ago
    How can you get to a conviction without any other evidence? They didn’t confiscate his devices and do forensics on them that came up empty?
  • walrus0112 hours ago
    Note, the post title field isn't long enough, this is a skyrim themed username used on a 3rd party service. Not for the name used by character in Skyrim itself, which is not (without extensive and rare modding) a multiplayer game.
    • techjamiean hour ago
      There actually are skyrim "MMO" and roleplay servers. I've not tried it, but it comes up on my YouTube homepage a lot. So I initially assumed it was that.
  • defrost12 hours ago
    Article Title: 'A subtle mistake': How a single underscore led to an innocent Halifax man's conviction
    • walrus0111 hours ago
      Correct, I might have broken the title description rule, but I think my description more accurately summarizes what happened. I don't think my title is biased one way or the other.
      • jsnell11 hours ago
        Your title leaving out the "innocent" part makes it a stunningly inaccurate summary.
        • Jordan-1172 hours ago
          The article doesn't even mention Skyrim. To add that to the title plus the username itself but not the fact he was innocent is a wild choice.
      • beAbU7 hours ago
        I find it incredibly difficult to parse your title fwiw
      • Cytobit5 hours ago
        Your title is unbiased by way of incomprehensibility.
  • londons_explore11 hours ago
    Incompetence in the justice system is a good reason to keep all trackers on and privacy features off.

    That gives you enough data to robustly say "look, I couldn't have been in this chat conversation, because here is my data from that day and you'll clearly see I was running a marathon".

    I personally keep 24x7 audio recordings of my life to try to get ahead of false accusations.

    • nubg11 hours ago
      > I personally keep 24x7 audio recordings of my life to try to get ahead of false accusations.

      Can you go a little more into the details here?

      • londons_explore11 hours ago
        Just a little DIY android app that keeps an audio recorder always going and uploads recordings to cloud storage every 10 mins.

        It also attempts to transcribe the recordings and make a full text index, although the word error rate on that bit is rather high!

      • echelon_musk11 hours ago
        It has to be satire.
        • walrus0111 hours ago
          Audio recordings aren't good enough, this is why I keep 24x7 recordings of my life in 8K (4320p) raw YUV 4:4:4 color space video with uncompressed 24-bit audio. The NVME RAID array bills are getting a bit steep, however.
        • londons_explore11 hours ago
          No, but I do have other reasons for doing it beyond just false accusations.
          • pipes10 hours ago
            do you tell people that you are talking to that they are being recorded?
            • mingus886 hours ago
              Yeah not only are we dealing with third party consent issues…but that kind of log is not going to hold up in court as OP suspects

              It does not really prove anything. So you have a bunch of blank audio files with timestamps when a crime was committed and you were asleep? I think I can create that trail pretty easily for any date and time I want.

    • 7e4 hours ago
      In two party consent states, 24x7 audio recordings are illegal if anyone else's voice creeps into your recording. And easily fakeable by AI, I imagine.
  • RaSoJo11 hours ago
    He has been set free, but his entire life has been destroyed by this "subtle" mistake. Once you have spent time, no employer will touch you with a barge pole. (innocence not withstanding)

    Do hope he can claim compensation...

    • nubg11 hours ago
      > Do hope he can claim compensation...

      Can any UK lawyer chime in?

      • OJFord11 hours ago
        This is an error by US (Wisconsin) police misidentifying a man in (Halifax, Nova Scotia) Canada. Why do you want to hear from a UK lawyer?

        It sounds like the appeal hasn't actually happened/completed yet anyway, that they're trying to raise public interest/outrage to help the case.

        • walrus0111 hours ago
          The appeal has been completed and he's been acquitted. Note the past tense in how the CBC wrote this part:

          "The Wisconsin police identified Mr. Klayme as the offender using the incorrect username. His conviction rested on the internet username being attributed to him,” the appeal panel wrote.

          The Appeal Court decision said no evidence was found linking Klayme to the girl, the Kik conversations, or the intimate images.

          In addition to an acquittal entered on the charges, the sentence and ancillary orders against Klayme were vacated.

          • OJFord10 hours ago
            Thanks, it was:

            > "This is not a situation where an acquittal is entered because the Crown has failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the essential elements of an offence or an error during the trial made the verdict unsafe," the appeal panel wrote.

            That confused me – but I see now it's supposed to connect to the next paragraph (?!) – "it's not that there was procedural error, it's that he was completely innocent all along". (I do think it's written poorly, but I also haven't had a coffee yet..)

    • spwa410 hours ago
      The justice system has rules for compensation when they make mistakes. They differ across countries, but one thing is for sure:

      You, as a private citizen and thus a target/victim of this, are not going to like them at all. It's something like 20$ per full day locked up in middle America, and 0 for any pretrial detention. Ie. after 2 months your wage and/or unemployment benefits go to zero and if you're innocent you get what is effectively a replacement "wage" of 7300$ per year with deductions. Your rent, of course, does not go to zero. Nor does any other obligation, from Netflix to child support payments.

      The main deduction from that 7300$ is whether or not the judge later declared pretrial detention the actual sentence, which they very often do, as especially in the last decade pretrial detention can exceed the punishment for the crime. This means everything goes to zero for pretrial detention. There is no limit to the duration of pretrial detention.

      Oh and the justice system for adults actually does have some form of compensation, as in there is something.

      If you're a minor, youth services, famous for studies pointing out every decision they make is based on incorrect information (ie. everybody lies to youth services, kids, parents, schools, sports clubs, and of course youth services itself, the justice system and institutions, aside from the massive difference in perspective, all parties are extremely incentivized to lie in essentially all situations, and that is perfectly legal), there is not any form of compensation. There are minors locked up in America with the reasoning akin to "We're 100% sure you did NOT do the crime you're accused of but we still think you need to be protected". Yes, protected, that's why there's no compensation. The prison camp with barbed wire (which you can see on Netflix "Girls Incarcerated", for example) is only for protection.

      And you know what the really bad part is. In the barbed wire prison camp, you have the RIGHT to study, as a "protected" (ie. incarcerated) kid. In open institutions, you do NOT have the right to study. There is a particularly bad example of a kid that claims to have put a knife in the throat of a social worker to be allowed to study, and yes, he finished high school (at home, by the way, the prison camp didn't keep him there for more than 2 weeks after the "incident" and yes, they have the right to make that decision)

  • whycome6 hours ago
    Why is this flagged
    • dqv3 hours ago
      There are a lot of people on HN who really don't like criticism of the police, but the surface-level reason will be "it's not technology-related".
      • standeven3 hours ago
        More likely it’s because the title rule was broken. The original title was not used, and the new title is unclear.
  • 11 hours ago
    undefined
  • M95D4 hours ago
    A classic Tuttle/Buttle teleprinter mistake.
  • zulux3 hours ago
    Because of crap like this, our business has a standing policy of always using copy and paste when transferring data. We view it as a show-stopping bug when we can't do that from one system to another.

    Saves us an incredible amount of drama. The hard part is following through when the data is simple.

  • oriettaxx12 hours ago
    and these are called 'investigators'?
    • hurfdurf11 hours ago
      Convicting an person who is not guilty, that's how good they are. /s