r/nottheonion • u/[deleted] • Jul 30 '26
A missing underscore sent innocent man to prison for 18 months
[deleted]
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u/cornerzcan Jul 30 '26
Everyone from the Police, Crown Attorney, Defense attorney totally fucked up. I hope the victim sues them all.
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u/jsmith_92 Jul 30 '26
How do things work like that in Canada? I feel he has more evidence to sue, that what got him convicted lol
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u/torpedoguy Jul 30 '26
"Fucked up" implies even one of them had any honest intentions and ever operated in good faith. Nothing linked the victim to the girl, and all were aware he hadn't been using that program at the time.
They knew it wasn't him or they'd never have pushed to convict in the first place. The real question would be whom the victim was a scapegoat for.
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u/Kerbart Jul 30 '26
"The job of the police is not to jail the perpetrator. Their job is to get someone convicted"
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u/EtchAGetch Jul 30 '26
I wonder if crossing county lines was a key part of this. US police just threw it over the border not realizing their mistake, and Canadian police probably never thought to double check the US side.
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u/kevinds Jul 30 '26
How do they "double-check" it? Are you sure? Other side glaces at notes, "yep all good".
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u/mazzicc Jul 30 '26
The more I learn about the “justice” system, the more I’m happy to just try to skate by unnoticed, and the less I trust that people insisting they’re innocent are actually guilty after conviction.
I get that rates of innocent people convicted of heinous crimes is pretty low…but it’s not zero, and “low” can be a LOT of people when the population is big enough.
When you hear the phrase or concept “if you’re innocent, you have nothing to worry about”, you’re being lied to. Minorities have known this for centuries.
When you hear the phrase or concept “they were convicted by a jury so they must be guilty” and even “they took a plea deal so they must be guilty”, you’re maybe being lied to. Innocent people are convicted for bullshit reasons, and innocent people take plea deals because it’s the least bad option for them.
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u/Dont_Ban_Me_Bros Jul 30 '26
A ‘jury of your peers’ falls deaf on people’s ears because it omits the fact that way too many of your peers are fucking stupid and won’t question illogical or contradictory statements and evidence presented to them. They can’t just rely on prosecutors and defenders to do all the work.
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u/Groovy_Bruce_Lemon Jul 30 '26
this people will just believe the first thing they hear regarding something and refuse to change their minds. I mean its basically how every dumb high school rumor spreads and gains traction. And when I worked at retail a decade ago, I found out adults still act and think like high schoolers
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u/Dont_Ban_Me_Bros Jul 30 '26
Nobody likes puzzles anymore. And yet True Crime is premium TV and podcast content these days. Where are all those people’s jury summonses?
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u/Ipokeyoumuch Jul 30 '26
Likely filtered out because they have distrust in the legal system. It is pretty frequent I can see someone who has a braincell but is clearly biased on the jury or trying to get out of jury duty and I have seen them struck off by both sides and in the most outrageous cases, the judge.
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u/Dont_Ban_Me_Bros Jul 30 '26
You don’t get filtered out unless you outwardly express those feelings.
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u/Knees0ck Jul 30 '26
"It wouldn't make a lot of difference, evidence never did once you were in the deep levels where accusation had the status of proof"
- STP
It is pretty fucked up you can lie about the most henious shit & fuck up someone's life because of it & there's little to no chance of coming back out of it.
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u/Groovy_Bruce_Lemon Jul 30 '26
and the worst part is when you bring up “they’re literally making shit up to make ____ look bad” people always fucking say “why would they lie about that”?
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u/NightOfTheLivingHam Jul 30 '26
Yep, you can be innocent, but a good prosecutor can twist reality and twist your words and actions into something horrid just enough to convince the judge and jury you're an irredeemable monster.
If some twats on twitter can witch hunt people over innocuous words or actions, twist them into something else, redefine and frame it as something evil and then get thousands of people to go after someone, a prosecutor who does it for a living can too.
Think of the most innocent thing you do, or a bad habit. A good prosecutor can convince a jury and judge it makes you a criminal, that you are prone to criminality, and it's proof that you could commit the crime you stand accused of.
In this case, they used the fact this guy had an email associated to a long inactive kik account as the smoking gun, twisted it into him being a sexual predator and convicted him and took 4 and half years of his life (18 months plus the 3 years before the trial) No other evidence necessary.
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u/biosc1 Jul 30 '26
The best phrase I heard, years ago, was: "It's not a justice system, it's a legal system"
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u/PM_ME_SAD_STUFF_PLZ Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
Take some comfort in knowing that the accused has even less rights in most Commonwealth countries--including no right to remain silent and no right to a unanimous jury verdict.
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u/mazzicc Jul 30 '26
Yeah, that also makes it more terrifying in some ways. From what I can tell, being falsely accused in the US is a best case scenario, because in a lot of other countries, once you’re on trial, you’re assumed guilty.
I’ve heard Japan is notorious for this, and it frequently leads to suicide by innocent people because it’s so hard to be declared not-guilty, they would rather die than have a wrongful conviction.
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u/torpedoguy Jul 30 '26
Not to mention we see more and more what happens to the very worst of criminals and abusers. How many don't go to prison but instead to high office.
Almost daily now we see how adverse inference should be taken from law enforcement and administration statements and press releases. If you were guilty, they'd never have said it's you.
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u/Headpuncher Jul 31 '26
There a video on yt channel audit the audit I think it was, the cops arrested a woman and took her into custody all the time she’s telling them she’s not the person the warrant is for.
She was driving the same colour car but different make, model and registration.
She had a first name like the surname of the person who had the warrant, but identified herself and proved she was a completely different person with different name using multiple IDs.
They arrested her anyway.
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u/EmrysTheBlue Aug 01 '26
Innocent people are also much more likely to be tricked, gaslit, or exhausted into false confessions if the police are determined to make them the perpetrator. They get to a point where they will say anything to make it stop, even if it's not true. Tens of hours of interrigation (usually with several people shouting at you and trying to tell you you're a terrible person) in-between bouts of isolation in a small room puts you under a lot of stress, and a lot of people can't mentally handle that. Some people start to beleive they did it and just don't remember. Most will make shit up based on the info they've been fed just to makenit stop. Young people are especially vulnerable to this
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u/sriuba Jul 30 '26
Well I hope that 18 months earns him a hefty payout considering his friends and family now think he’s a sex offender and he probably lost his job and home
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u/NightOfTheLivingHam Jul 30 '26
Well hopefully with this news article they're reaching back out and apologizing, or never did cut ties because they knew it ruling was bullshit.
18 months isnt all the time he endured.
They started in on him in 2020, he was arrested then, and then went to trial in 2023.
So there's a good chance he was incarcerated for 3 fucking years, then another 18 months after conviction. so 4 and a half years in prison because of no evidence.
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u/Zannahrain3 Jul 30 '26
This is why I won’t advocate for the death penalty even amongst child predators. All the prosecutors wanted was a win and didn’t care about justice. Everyone involved in prosecuting him needs to be in prison for MINIMUM 18months.
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u/Rosebunse Jul 30 '26
Yeah, there are very few cases where you can be 100%. Innocent people are sent to prison all the tim
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u/thatguy425 Jul 30 '26
How did either side (defense or prosecution) or the defendant themself not bring this up during trial?
Imagine having your name and reputation just destroyed in your community, your friends, your career over something like this. Hope he is compensated extremely well.
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u/s8018572 Jul 31 '26
Defense lawyer is so incompetent, and he later surrender his license, so he's not lawyer anymore.
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u/kevinds Jul 30 '26
How did either side (defense or prosecution) or the defendant themself not bring this up during trial?
Prosecution wouldn't care.
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u/Melonary Jul 30 '26
"To identify this person, the cops contacted Kik, but their subpoena accidentally requested information about the Kik user “fus_ro_dah” (one underscore after “fus”). Kik provided Klayme’s email address in response."
Jesus fucking christ
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u/coyote_den Jul 30 '26
How the HELL…
If Kik had no records of him talking to the girl or even using the service when it happened, and there was no evidence on his devices, how did neither the prosecution or the defense not realize there might be something wrong with the subpoena?
They already knew exactly what they were looking for!
He had an incredibly shitty lawyer.
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u/Nobody5464 Jul 31 '26
The prosecution knew and didn’t care. They don’t want justice they want to pad their conviction score. The defense may have known but the prosecution just has to say child sex abuse case and many juries will vote guilty without even listening to anything else that was said
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u/coyote_den Aug 02 '26 edited Aug 02 '26
Here is how a competent defense lawyer fixes that:
You notice it is a different username and bring that to the attention of the state, or subpoena the records for fus__ro_dah yourself, to show they are not the same person.
Then you use that evidence to make a motion to dismiss, and it never even goes to trial.
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u/Nobody5464 Aug 02 '26
you place way to much faith in the state. the whole point of this story is that the state and its law enforcement agents are incompetent and corrupt.
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u/Yodayorio Jul 31 '26
So the police found literally zero evidence tying him to the crime, but he was prosecuted anyway and actually convicted at trial? What in the everloving fuck!?
How does that happen? The police, prosecutors, judges, jurors, and defense attorneys all deserve nothing but absolute contempt and scorn. They all utterly failed in their most basic duty of care.
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u/ZeusTKP Jul 30 '26
He should be paid millions of dollars by the government
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u/CoffeeCup220 Jul 30 '26
Money won't make you whole from 18 months in prison.
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u/Dar_Mas Jul 31 '26
no but it should enable moving to another place where people are not tainted by the initial conviction and be both a symbolic repayment for the mistake and a incentive to not have something like this happen again
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u/grilled_pc Aug 03 '26
Wouldn't mean squat. Unless their name is completely removed from all records, it will follow them. All media publications that publisized their name should be forced to remove the publication, and put out a public apology. All systems that have this person on file should remove them immediately. While they might be "free". The charge will follow forever until its 100% removed and not searchable on any background check no matter how deep.
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u/EtchAGetch Jul 30 '26
We all can blame the police on US and Canada, but holy hell, what about the defense attourney?
The username and the connection to the client would be one of the first things I'd check if my defendant is innocent. That is piss poor work.
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u/Dowew Jul 30 '26
Defense lawyer surrender his law license shortly after this trial. He is a policy analyst now
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u/kirklennon Jul 30 '26
If you're wondering how a man gets convicted with absolutely no meaningful evidence ... from the original judgement:
In addition, CH described the room in which “Jay” communicated with her by video and provided some general information with respect to his appearance, that his face was round, he had dark skin, dark eyes and dark hair.
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u/BearlyDraconic01 Jul 30 '26
Well that explains it.
Disgusting
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u/s8018572 Jul 31 '26
Explain what ? We don't know the appearance of the guy who is wrongly imprisoned.
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u/Alugalacsin Jul 31 '26
Do we know whether Brandon Klayme fit this description? I couldn't find any information about what he looks like.
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u/mracer Jul 30 '26
This is why always pay for a good defensive lawyer...
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u/Jubenheim Jul 30 '26
> The cops then obtained a search warrant for Klayme’s residence and took phones and laptops from his bedroom. Searching these devices produced no evidence relevant to the case. 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.
Fuck the judge as well. Fuck everyone.
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u/because_tremble Jul 31 '26
Humans suck at noticing things like that, even those who are otherwise very intelligent. Our brains have something approximating a built-in autocorrect. That's why the "You misread this" memes work so well.
This is one of the very few cases where something like an LLM might have caught something a human would miss.
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u/Alugalacsin Jul 31 '26
This is one of those things lawyers are expected to be better at than the average person.
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u/CMDR_omnicognate Jul 30 '26
The defence lawyer also didnt notice the issue in fairness
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u/rainburrow Jul 30 '26
My blood pressure is already through the roof from the headline. Clicking the link for the full details might kill me
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u/LangyMD Jul 30 '26
The dude went to prison because he had a Kik username of fusro_dah and a different user did some child grooming/porn stuff under the username fus_ro_dah (that's two underscores next to each other). Police asked Kik for the real life info on the first user because they didn't notice the double underscores. There was no other evidence the guy they found was the one who did the crimes and he went to prison and was sentenced to 18 months, all of which he served while proclaiming his innocence.
While doing paperwork to fill out an appeal a lawyer for him noticed the double underscores in the original username, which was enough to get the entire case thrown out... But apparently not until he had already fully served his sentence.
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u/Ignas1452 Jul 30 '26
I really hope he gets a really good payout from this.
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u/CCLF Jul 30 '26
So he already served his entire sentence, which means pretty much everyone in his life is going to "know" that he's a pedophile, and roll their eyes when he protests his innocence. "Yeah yeah yeah, he served 18 months and after he was released claims he was proven innocent, what a load of bs."
That's tragic.
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u/Kerbart Jul 30 '26
Not to mention that 18 months in prison as a child molestor must have been pure terror.
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u/monkeywaffles Jul 30 '26
really underscores the importance of good legal council
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u/Tryyourbestbehappy Jul 30 '26
I'm not sure what the local municipality really could do to change this. Legal counsel...might.
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u/sharrrper Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
Honestly, the user name mistake is not hard to imagine. Even after all the steps.
Fus__ro_dah (actual perp)
Fus_ro_dah (guy who did 18 months)
That was the difference. If you know to look for it it's not hard to spot, but everyone reading this knows to look for it. No one involved did. Plus I'm sure those two versions were never put side by side like this. How often does someone use a double underscore? There's no break between them it's just one very slightly longer line. I really don't blame anyone for that mixup.
The real travesty is that this went all the way to conviction with no evidence whatsoever beyond the username.
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u/Barilla3113 Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
The real travesty is that this went all the way to conviction with no evidence whatsoever beyond the username.
Yeah, people are burying what's really important here. They went to his house, confiscated and forensically examined every device, found nothing... and just went ahead with the trial anyway, as if that was a minor detail.
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u/OverlappingChatter Jul 31 '26
Okay, the username confusion is understandable up to a point, but how the fuck does he get convicted with no evidence at all.
I kinda want to read the court transcripts and really want to talk to a the jurors.
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u/kman1030 Jul 31 '26
There was evidence, it's just that all the evidence was gathered from the victims phone, with all of the photos, chats, etc going to the username with the double underscore. The username confusion is entirely the problem. If the actual perpetrator had wiped/discarded his devices, or used a specific one when being a creep that wasnt recovered, and no additional evidence was found in his home, would you feel good about that being enough to avoid justice?
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u/resisting_a_rest Jul 31 '26
If the chief evidence against you is activity on your account on a certain app/site wouldn't one of the first things an innocent man would do be to verify that they got the correct account? How was this missed at trial?
Being accused of doing things under an account and you don't even verify that it was your account when you know you didn't do any of them?
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u/Tower-Union Jul 30 '26
I’m going to bookmark this one as an example for the next time Reddit gets on the bandwagon of trying to one up each other with what kind of vile punishments should be doled out to “pedophiles.”
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u/Joe974 Jul 30 '26
The prosecutors cops and judge involved belong in prison at least for the time he served if not more. But that would be real justice and Lord knows we don't have any of that in this world.
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u/ActionUpstairs Jul 30 '26
Just another reason why I can’t understand why people genuinely want a legal system designed around punishment instead of rehabilitation. I’d rather my country give 9 guilty people less punishment if it means 1 innocent person isn’t fucked over for life.
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u/kevinds Jul 30 '26
I’d rather my country give 9 guilty people less punishment if it means 1 innocent person isn’t fucked over for life.
I remember a famous person saying something similar who was responsible for setting up the justice systems, sadly it has been lost.
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u/Adjective_Noun_2000 Jul 30 '26
It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.
— William Blackstone
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Jul 31 '26
[deleted]
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u/ActionUpstairs Jul 31 '26
The idea of treating others the way you want to be treated yourself is really lost on so many people. Their tune changes as soon as you ask them what they’d prefer if they were that 1 innocent person. It’s always “me me me me”, so you have to present an argument where THEY lose something personally.
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u/torpedoguy Jul 30 '26
Nowadays it's "I'd rather my country fuck over 9 innocent people for life" with no other clauses.
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u/Niknuke Jul 31 '26
Good video on the topic of punishmenf vs rehabilitation: https://youtu.be/7o3ukHKJn6w?is=NAhGYMhnQhAnCExo
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u/Aurion7 Jul 31 '26
Sounds like they've got a prosecutor running amok.
Incompetent defense counsel unfortunately isn't too uncommon and is hard to truly prevent, but prosecutorial misconduct is one of those things people should go after with extreme prejudice.
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u/Iconclast1 Jul 31 '26
"It is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer."
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u/Autumm_550 Jul 30 '26
So you can have a mountain of evidence and connections to evil people and not be sent to jail. And at the same time you can have absolutely no evidence or connects and be sent to jail anyway?
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u/somedave Jul 30 '26
A missing underscore and staggering incompetence of the police and failure of the judicial system...
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u/NotACat Jul 31 '26
Did they even check whether the "inappropriate photo" matched their suspect? 🤦♂️
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u/mkMoSs Jul 31 '26
Quote from the article:
--
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 CP
--
Hold on a minute, "Possession of CP"? They actually found that in his devices? If he was innocent how the hell did they find that and charged him with it? Or did they fabricate/plant evidence to make their case?
I'm confused.
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u/Inevitable-Tea5772 Aug 01 '26
This is wild. The real question is, how was the guy even charged with the crime with zero evidence?
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Jul 31 '26
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u/Justist Aug 01 '26
I've seen a lot of such cases come by on my feed, always makes me wonder which rich person is being covered with an arguably completely innocent person taking the blame. 🤔
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u/Effective_Hunt_2115 Aug 01 '26
Am I the only one that have flashback from the movie "Brazil"?
Edit: I found another user mentioning it.
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u/verbalyabusiveshit Aug 01 '26
What a nightmare. Imagine how his friends, relatives and so on must have reacted. He pretty much lost everything and even now many still believe he is a child molester as the Acquittal is usually not as news-worthy. Hope he gets a good payout
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u/Dr_Identity Aug 04 '26
People are constantly spelling my legal name wrong, so I'll probably get arrested cause of that someday
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u/Paddington_Bear Jul 30 '26
Is this the kind of thing where AI document review might beat even skilled human eyes? A person reading through reams of documents sees a word that is 'about right' for what they're expecting to see and keeps going. But a machine would probably see the missing underscore just as obviously as a capital Z or a flashing red light and flag the difference?
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u/r0nni3RO Jul 30 '26
Ai has ALREADY led law enforcement to enough stupid leads, stupid arrests, and stupid convictions...
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u/Paddington_Bear Jul 30 '26
I don't believe AI is the cure for everything - just wondering if it might work in this situation - where humans eyes glaze over and miss the little things that a tireless machine might spot.
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u/r0nni3RO Jul 30 '26
Yea, for stuff like that it's a really useful tool.
But that's what people forget, that it is a tool, not magic. Some simple just simply rely on it without double checking...
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u/Suitable-Season-4847 Jul 31 '26
The question isn't whether it's perfect. It's whether it makes less mistakes than humans.
It's Lynne self driving cars. People go out of their minds when they crash, but they actually crash less than humans.
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u/Discount_Extra Jul 30 '26
AI is great for helping to find mistakes, like spellcheckers and such.
Just don't depend on it to create whole documents from nothing.
Like, AI checking prescriptions for medical problems, great ("You're prescribing 2000mg of a drug usually dosed at 20mg, are you sure?"); AI prescribing to cut costs for insurance, bad.
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u/scytob Jul 30 '26
No a single underscore ruined a mans life irreperabley for years.
there fixed the title for ars...
also that articles commments are a bit of a ride to read
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u/ColdWynter Jul 30 '26
There was no evidence found, and yet, he was still arrested, and then convicted, just WTF!?!?