A Canadian man served 18 months in prison after being wrongfully convicted of offenses related to child sexual abuse imagery in 2023 when investigators mixed up his username on an instant messaging app, an appeals court in Nova Scotia found.
The man, Brandon Klayme, 30, of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, was acquitted of all charges on July 23 by the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal, which also vacated his sentence.
The court determined that law enforcement officers had mixed up Mr. Klayme’s username on the instant messaging app Kik with another account that had sent sexually explicit material in 2018 to a 12-year-old girl in Madison, Wis. The difference was subtle: The username of the offending account had an additional underscore.
Mr. Klayme’s username was fus_ro_dah, while the messages came from an account with the username fus__ro_dah, which had two underscores in it between fus and ro, according to the ruling.
Both names come from the dragon language in the role-playing console game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and roughly translate to force, balance and push.
But when the Dane County Sheriff’s Office in Wisconsin began investigating messages that were sent to the victim, it did not pick up on the slight variation, the court found. Neither did the Halifax Regional Police in Nova Scotia, which took over the case.
In February 2020, while Mr. Klayme was living with his parents and working for the family’s pizzeria, the Halifax Regional Police executed a search warrant at his home and seized all of his electronic devices, including his phones and laptop computers, according to his affidavit.
Mr. Klayme, who was serving 18 months of probation that followed his time in prison at the time of his acquittal, highlighted the discrepancy in an affidavit in May that was part of his appeal. In his affidavit, Mr. Klayme said he had not used his Kik account since late 2012, about six years before the victim received the sexually explicit messages.
“In the latter stages of preparing my appeal arguments, it was discovered that the subpoena contained a subtle mistake that changed the course of my life,” Mr. Klayme wrote. “The police officer did not notice that the perpetrator’s Kik username ‘fus__ro_dah’ contains a double underscore. This discrepancy went completely unnoticed at the trial. It was never brought to the attention of the trial judge.”
In an email on Wednesday, Zeb Brown, Mr. Klayme’s appellate lawyer, said he had noticed the error.
“We couldn’t figure out how Mr. Klayme’s account came into it,” Mr. Brown said. “So we were taking a closer look at the trial evidence and the discrepancy was readily apparent in the printouts of the social media messages.”
After a trial in April 2023, Mr. Klayme was convicted by a judge of making sexually explicit material available to a child, child luring and possession of child sexual abuse imagery. In January 2024, he was sentenced to 18 months of prison, which he served before the court granted his appeal. His lawyer said he was “currently exploring his options and getting advice in regard to seeking damages in a civil lawsuit.”
In the decision acquitting Mr. Klayme, the judges said that investigators provided Kik with the wrong username that was used to obtain Mr. Klayme’s email address. The account that sent the messages to the girl belonged to a different person in California, according to the ruling.
“He should never have been charged, let alone convicted,” the judges said.
It was not immediately clear if the authorities were pursuing the person who sent the messages to the girl.
Melissa Noonan, a spokeswoman for the Nova Scotia Public Prosecution Service, acknowledged in a statement on Wednesday that Mr. Klayme’s conviction had been flawed.
“We recognize the seriousness of the outcome for Mr. Klayme,” Ms. Noonan said.
“Once it became clear that the conviction was based on incorrect evidence,” she said, prosecutors “provided the resulting information to the court, supported its admission as fresh evidence, conceded that the appeal should be allowed, and asked the court to enter an acquittal.”
In a statement on Wednesday, the Halifax Regional Police said it was not the agency that had initiated the investigation.
“This was a complex investigation as it began with a police agency in Wisconsin before the support of the Halifax Regional Police was requested,” the statement said. “In light of the court’s recent decision, we are committed to reviewing this file and our role in the outcome.”
Kik did not respond to a message about its role in the investigation.
A spokeswoman for the Dane County Sheriff’s Office said in an email on Wednesday that the agency did not have a record of the case.
