A missing underscore in a username sent an innocent man to prison for 18 months

[jdrch]

America, ladies and gentleman, where the mere suspicion of guilt gets you thrown in jail.

Story is from Canada lmao. Original link even goes to CBC.

 

[PierreJG]

Much more severe, but it reminds me of the black kid who was executed in the 1950s just because of his skin color. He was exonerated, I think, in 2009. But what does it help. He was still wrongly executed. Humans make mistakes. We had a guy who was sentenced to the worst Jail in South Africa, also for a year. He got a massive payout, but it does not help with the trauma. He saw daily how people are murdered in Jail. No amount of money can make that unseen.

 

[Charlie Green]

As Life imatates Art...

* The Mistake: A dead fly jams the printing apparatus at the Ministry of Information, changing "Tuttle" to "Buttle" on a detention order.

* The Victim: Mr. Archibald Buttle is wrongfully arrested, tortured, and killed by the state.

* The Real Target: Harry Tuttle - an independent, guerrilla heating engineer considered a dangerous outlaw by the system for fixing ducts without a proper government license.

* The Fallout: Low-level clerk Sam Lowry is sent to deliver a refund check to Buttle's widow, pulling him into a spiraling nightmare against an unyielding machine of state.

 

[GrayDragon]

Hopefully he can sue them and get a decent amount of money for this.
Wait till DEI unleashes its full potential. There will be hordes of them working in many important positions including where they will decide if a person goes to jail or is innocent. There will be many more broken lives. DEI is one of the cruelest thing one person can impose on their fellow countrymen. It is so evil that it can only be a part of a much bigger evil ideology that would exist to ruin lives. And it is.

As a small example, check out what judges usually allow violent people out resulting in a murder or another serious offense. We can already see how it works. And after that, we can only decide if we are ok with it or whether it is an evil that must be eradicated.

I think you got it backwards. "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policy is a set of rules and goals that a company or school uses to treat all people fairly." It doesn't have anything to do with this case and in fact, the guy was treated UNfairly, so it's the opposite of what you think.

 

[GrayDragon]

Knowing prosecutors, they probably hid that fact and convicted him anyway, knowing he was innocent.

The truth? They don't care who goes to prison, so long as they get their conviction.

I think it's more likely to be either (a) they are overworked and underpaid or (b) they didn't read the facts in which case they were incompetent doodads.

 

[GrayDragon]

You have to understand that other countries doesn't have the legal protection that the US has. Most other places you have to prove your innocence and the courts regularly side with the authorities. While the US system is far from perfect, it is better than most others.

I believe those "other countries" are using Roman-based law, in which you have to prove your innocence on your own or with your attorney, which is more difficult than the prosecutor proving your guilt on their own using evidence. Evidence of guilt is easier to establish, providing the prosecutor doesn't screw up and try to go ahead sans evidence as happened here.