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A missing underscore sent innocent man to prison for 18 months

arstechnica.com

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Re: A missing underscore sent innocent man to prison for 18 months

#251

Post by thephyber »

qingcharles wrote: post #235
voakbasda wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have heard prosecutors say that innocent or guilty doesn’t matter. All that matters is whether they can convict.

I've known and hung out with a lot of prosecutors. I've never heard one say anything like that outright, but , one of the main issues is that in 99.9% of cases the evidence will not be looked at. They are just not given the time and resources to even take a single glance at the police reports, never mind any forensic evidence. They literally have no idea whether the person is guilty or innocent when they offer a plea…

In the US legal system, the defense isn't given access to the prosecution's evidence used in the case immediately. In fact, lots of plea bargains happen before the defense attorney knows for sure what evidence there is to tie their client to the crime.

Re: A missing underscore sent innocent man to prison for 18 months

#252

Post by tomhow »

illliillll wrote: post #157
srdjanr wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, we should kill everyone who makes an honest, human mistake. Especially if it's so hard to catch that at least 3 people missed it (someone from the police, prosecutor, and defense lawyer).

That’s absurd. The standard in Canada is “beyond a reasonable doubt”, a standard which does not leave much room for “honest, human mistakes” if you actually take it seriously. If the judge bothered to review the evidence, he’d presumably have been baffled by the fact that nothing has been recovered from the defendant connecting him to the crime. This judge chose to not do that and chose not to be baffled, that wasn’t…

Could you please stop posting ragey comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

It's not okay to assert that anyone “deserves a bullet in the head” here, for any reason. In the case in question, clearly the system, and multiple people within it, failed to notice the issue. On HN we expect people to be thoughtful and curious, and ”bullet in the head” is a barbaric, medieval reaction to a modern scenario.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Re: A missing underscore sent innocent man to prison for 18 months

#253

Post by thephyber »

voakbasda wrote: post #229
mothballed wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a gazillion federal prosecutions in the US that go something like 1) Pile of evidence that someone is guilty. 2) Federal "expert witness" allowed and funded to testify it points to X person 3) Defense is broke 4) If defense not broke, judge finds reason why defense expert witness can't present their full argument 5) Prosecution offers plea deal or a gazillion years in jail 6) Person folds when they realize…

I have heard prosecutors say that innocent or guilty doesn’t matter. All that matters is whether they can convict.

I doubt any professional prosecutors would say this out loud. This is likely a disciplinable or disbarrable statement.

This is effectively a truth, but prosecutors are generally held to high ethical standards, where they are expected to drop cases / not bring cases if the evidence doesn't point specifically to the defendant.

That said, there are occasionally times when prosecutors have been caught hiding / burying / not sharing exculpatory evidence (something the police / prosecution found which would help the defense's case against the prosecution). The only reason to do so would be to sandbag the case against the defendant even when there is a shadow of a doubt in the prosecution's case.

Re: A missing underscore sent innocent man to prison for 18 months

#254

Post by jasonfarnon »

vintermann wrote: post #154
jasonfarnon wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 t…

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

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

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

Re: A missing underscore sent innocent man to prison for 18 months

#255

Post by thephyber »

expedition32 wrote: post #184
OsrsNeedsf2P wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 foun…

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.

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

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

Re: A missing underscore sent innocent man to prison for 18 months

#256

Post by thephyber »

throw383949 wrote: post #146
qingcharles wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Canadian justice system is under stronge pressure to bring rate of conviction up. Only 0.001% rapist end in prison and bs like that. Some corners must be cut, to reach quotas!

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

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

Re: A missing underscore sent innocent man to prison for 18 months

#257

Post by jasonfarnon »

nimonian wrote: post #204
vintermann wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

_Exactly_. Both the article and the parent comment treat "happens to have Kik account" as an independent discovery that affects our Bayesian inference. No. The innocent was identified exactly _because_ they have a Kik account, so the conditional probability they have a Kik account is 1.

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

Re: A missing underscore sent innocent man to prison for 18 months

#258

Post by thephyber »

giantg2 wrote: post #78
thephyber wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"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.

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.

Re: A missing underscore sent innocent man to prison for 18 months

#259

Post by DoctorOetker »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #149
oersted wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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