8 ms·

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 t

by shusaku 2mo 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 2mo 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 2mo 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 2mo 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 2mo 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 2mo 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).
  - jibal 2mo ago
    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 2mo ago
      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 2mo ago
        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 2mo ago
        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.
        ralferoo 2mo ago
        I'm not sure they would have pursued it much TBH. It seems an incorrect username match was already a slam-dunk for the jury. Even if the defence had seen that the IP address was in the wrong location, the prosecution would argue they'd use a residential proxy. It'd be hard to prove or disprove, so it'd probably impact the jury about the same as the IP address being totally in the wrong region - i.e. it'd not be the magic bullet to show his innocence.
  - thephyber 2mo ago
    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.
- qingcharles 2mo ago
  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 2mo ago
    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
    - leni536 2mo ago
      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?
    - pinkmuffinere 2mo ago
      > 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.
    - expedition32 2mo ago
      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.
throw101010 2mo ago
> 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 2mo ago
  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 2mo ago
    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.
    - account42 2mo ago
      Why do you assume that the IP that sent the messages was recorded. They the police went after the email at least suggests that it wasn't in the data that Kik provided during the police investigation.
    - jibal 1mo ago
      > Why do you assume that the IP that sent the messages was recorded. Seriously? It's not an assumption.
- fortran77 2mo ago
saidnooneever 2mo ago
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by shusaku 2mo ago

thephyber 2mo 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 2mo 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 2mo 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 2mo 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 2mo 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).
- jibal 2mo ago
  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 2mo ago
    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 2mo ago
      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 2mo ago
      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.
      - ralferoo 2mo ago
        I'm not sure they would have pursued it much TBH. It seems an incorrect username match was already a slam-dunk for the jury. Even if the defence had seen that the IP address was in the wrong location, the prosecution would argue they'd use a residential proxy. It'd be hard to prove or disprove, so it'd probably impact the jury about the same as the IP address being totally in the wrong region - i.e. it'd not be the magic bullet to show his innocence.
- thephyber 2mo ago
  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.
qingcharles 2mo ago
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 2mo ago
  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
  - leni536 2mo ago
    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?
  - pinkmuffinere 2mo ago
    > 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.
  - expedition32 2mo ago
    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.

throw101010 2mo ago

> 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 2mo ago
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 2mo ago
  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.
  - account42 2mo ago
    Why do you assume that the IP that sent the messages was recorded. They the police went after the email at least suggests that it wasn't in the data that Kik provided during the police investigation.
  - jibal 1mo ago
    > Why do you assume that the IP that sent the messages was recorded. Seriously? It's not an assumption.
fortran77 2mo ago

saidnooneever 2mo ago

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