This is completely dystopian. Did he have the worst legal defense possible, or are Canadian laws such that an IP address is sufficient for any claimed charges to just stick?
This is most likely super common for criminal trials outside of highly professionalized police and prosecutors.
Theres no one technical in a court room.
The lawyers aren't supposed to be technical, but they should know their limitations and hire technical experts. But that also assumes the defendant can afford the defense, which is insanely expensive.
Yep,
So they have a cop stand up in court.
"We read X messages" (Here they are look how exceptionally heinous they are)
"We then asked the service for the IP."
"We then asked the ISP to deanonymise it. "
"Heres the guy we found at that IP"
He signs a stat dec that using his brilliant super techno crime brain he has correctly attributed the messages to this human.
It sounds like the defense from there was: But your honor, there's no history of these messages etc etc.
Judge is not technically capable of reviewing the evidence. Defense probably not technically capable of reviewing the evidence either. Prosecution probably not capable either. They are all just playing out parts really.
After probably having dealt with hundreds of these, on the balance of probability like most courts do they just backed in the statement by the cop.
The end unless you can find some way to challenge the technical evidence. Which he did after some time.
I want to see the transcripts.
sources: https://www.saltwire.com/nova-scotia/halifax/appeal-court-qu... and https://nsbs.org/general-notices/council-approves-resignatio...
In the US public defenders don't have time to try cases. They are basically plea bargain assistants.
I found the verdict here: https://www.canlii.org/en/ns/nspc/doc/2024/2024nspc4/2024nsp... but no transcript is given. it has to be requested, it seems.
The problem is that public defenders generally are starter defense attorneys, they're in the job to get experience so they can eventually quit and take a cushy private role. And secondly, they have very little time to allocate to each case; if the defendant is stuck in jail, then they have even less time to visit the defendant and prepare any kind of useful defense or trial strategy.
A public defender's primary strategy for their client is to, sadly, negotiate the best possible plea deal in the shortest amount of time to get the case off the docket.
(This might actually be in the best interests of the defendant; most defendants are guilty of something in the charging document, even if not everything they've been likely over-charged with; the justice system isn't quite so broken that it scoops up a huge number of factually innocent persons)
oh c'mon, if a technical person receives a piece of paper with a printed out user__name on it with the wrong number of underscores they'd just as likely make the same mistake. Rather than ban the use of paper, how about technical people ban fonts (designed by clueless font designers) that blend multiple underscores together?
A technical person did make the mistake, likely a police cyber forensics type.
But there's no one technical in the court room capable of reviewing their work and identifying the fault.
And they aren't in the court room to assist with technical analysis. Why we need to keep revisiting this confuses me.
>it's certainly nobody else's fault.
Not sure I would agree, but even if I did how is this a relevant reply? What's important to the defense is identifying the point at which the technical evidence is faulty. Blame and penalty for the screw up is irrelevant to the goal of getting the innocent party out of prison.