A man in Nova Scotia recently spent 18 months in jail after being convicted of possession of child pornography. There was only one problem. The username the entire case was based on, a reference to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, was wrong. It was off by a single underscore symbol. “A subtle mistake that changed the course of my life,” the man later wrote in the filings for his appeal.
Brandon Klayme was arrested by Halifax Regional Police in 2020 in connection with an investigation by the Wisconsin police into a man who was soliciting images of a 12-year-old girl on the messaging platform Kik, CBC reported last week (via Polygon). The suspect’s username on that platform was “fus__ro_dah.” It was a reference to the Unrelenting Force dragon shout in Bethesda’s hit 2011 RPG.
But instead of finding whoever that username belonged to, police found Klayme, whose username was “fus_ro_dah.” It was missing a second underscore in the first part, but apparently nobody noticed. Police got the email and IP address for Klayme instead. An interview with the victim to try to corroborate Klayme as the man who was in communication with her never took place, according to court documents. He was convicted at trial in 2023 and sentenced to 18 months in jail, followed by 18 months probation.
It wasn’t until earlier this year that Klayme’s attorney, Zeb Brown, spotted the missing underscore while working on the appeal. “We noticed the problem when we were working on the appeal arguments this spring,” Brown told CBC News. “We were trying to figure out why the digital forensic evidence pointed at him given his denial of any involvement.”
An appeal panel ended up acquitting Klayme of all charges and vacating everything to do with the proceedings. In an affidavit for the appeal, Klayme said that the findings which had resulted in his conviction “contained a subtle mistake that changed the course of my life.”
“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 offense or an error during the trial made the verdict unsafe,” the appeal panel wrote. “In these circumstances, Mr. Klayme is factually innocent of the offences. He should never have been charged, let alone convicted.”