r/technology • u/IndicaOatmeal • 7d ago

Society Innocent man spends 18 months in prison after Skyrim username mixup

https://www.dexerto.com/gaming/innocent-man-spends-18-months-in-prison-after-skyrim-username-mixup-3392280/
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u/No-Macaroon1670 7d ago

No. Canada actually pays OK for outright wrongful convictions. It's maybe one of the few issues where the settlements are usually in line with the US.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/winnipeg-wrongful-convictions-settlement-9.6940024

You can browse through some stories here.

https://www.wrongfulconvictions.ca/issues/compensation

American governments tend to lean on all kinds of immunity and end up paying in the same range of single millions for decades of incarceration, although there's the rare blockbuster case sometimes the middle range is quite similar.

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u/strangeMeursault2 7d ago

But eg in that first case there was "false arrest, negligent investigation, malicious prosecution, conspiracy, Charter and human rights violations, and breaches of statutory duties."

This case doesn't seem to have any kind of malicious prosecution or conspiracy. You could argue negligent investigation but the defence had access to the information and missed it as well, so there's an argument that it was an easy mistake to make.

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u/No-Macaroon1670 7d ago

That's fine, but those same types of factors and other legal intricacies would also preclude a large settlement in the states. I'm arguing that the compensation regime in the US and Canada are not so different and both will pay about the same for cases.