Jamie Nelson was Innocent Cathy Fordham is Guilty.......The Law is an ass

TORONTO -- In the end, justice came quickly for Jamie Nelson.Five-and-a-half years after being found guilty of a rape he did not commit and spending 3 1/2 years in prison, three Ontario Court of Appeal Justices took less than five minutes to overturn his conviction yesterday.After reading documents submitted by his appeal lawyer and a lawyer for the Crown -- both of whom asked for an acquittal -- Justices John Laskin, Stephen Goudge and Janet Simmons said they didn't even need to hear submissions. It was clear Mr. Nelson deserved an acquittal.
"We've read the material, and discussed this," Judge Laskin said. "We're in agreement. We propose to set aside the convictions and register acquittals."

Jamie Nelson emerges from the Ontario Court of Appeal in Toronto yesterday after his conviction for a sexual assault was overturned. Mr. Nelson spent 3 1/2 years in prison and said his day of justice 'feels good, but it doesn't give me back one of those days I spent in prison.'

He then endorsed the appeal file. As the judge did so, Mr. Nelson sighed and silently shed tears while sitting perfectly straight in the front row of courtroom 10 of Osgoode Hall.With the stroke of a pen, Mr. Nelson, 34, who is from Ottawa but now lives in Stratford, Ont., was given his life back.He now joins the list of the justice system's embarrassments -- falling in company with David Milgaard, who was wrongfully convicted of a Saskatchewan murder and served 23 years before a DNA test cleared him, as well as Donald Marshall and Guy Paul Morin. Mr. Nelson is an innocent man wrongfully convicted, and he wants people to learn from his plight.
"What happened today is what I've been waiting for since the day I was arrested," he said. "I can't put into words what I feel right now. What do you say when nobody believes you, you go to prison, you get treated like a rapist, then all of a sudden, people believe you.
"I told the truth all along. Sometimes I thought I was going crazy. I am innocent of this, and I can't believe this happened, but I have to. I lived it. Justice went right off the rails in my case, and it didn't have to. Wrongful convictions happen for a reason. Maybe by looking at my case, people in the justice system will learn, and it won't happen to somebody else.
"This feels good, but it doesn't give me back one of those days I spent in prison."
A civil action he is planning against the Ottawa police, the attorney general's office, and Corrections Canada may ease the pain, he said, but this is not about money, this is about respect and clearing his name.Mr. Nelson's case is a shining example of how things can go wrong when people are prepared to manipulate the justice system.In the mid-1990s, Mr. Nelson was involved in a bitter child-custody battle with his former girlfriend, Christine Thompson.

Cathy Fordham, 30, told police Mr. Nelson had viciously raped and beat her.Ms. Thompson was friends with Cathy Fordham who took an active role in the battle.Twice, when Mr. Nelson won more access rights to his son in family court, Ms. Fordham accused him of crimes against her. First she said he assaulted her.

Ms. Thompson was friends with Cathy Fordham, 30, who took an active role in the battle.Twice, when Mr. Nelson won more access rights to his son in family court, Ms. Fordham accused him of crimes against her. First she said he assaulted her. After a trial, he was convicted and sentenced to 120 days in jail.After he was released in 1995, he won access to his son on weekends and one night a week. But every time over five weeks that he showed up to collect his son, Ms. Thompson said the child wasn't there.
The last time, Mr. Nelson told Ms. Thompson they were going back to court. When he did this, she produced the child.That Sunday when he pulled into his driveway with his son in tow, he was arrested at gunpoint by police. It was April 30, 1996. The day before, Ms. Fordham told police Mr. Nelson had viciously raped and beat her two months previously in her Vanier apartment.She said she waited so long because she was afraid of Mr. Nelson.
The truth is, Mr. Nelson did no such thing. He was at home on the night in question. But the allegations were so brutal he was deemed a threat to society and denied bail.His trial took place over seven days. Assistant Crown attorney Mark Moors prosecuted. Ken Hall defended Mr. Nelson. Ontario Court Justice Hugh Fraser presided without a jury.Ms. Fordham was the Crown's main witness. She took the stand and gave details of the rape. She cried often. Mr. Nelson took the stand and denied the allegations.
Several others were called to establish an alibi for him.In the end, Judge Fraser found Ms. Fordham was telling the truth, Mr. Nelson and the other defence witnesses were lying and convicted him of sexual assault, forcible confinement and uttering death threats.
On Nov. 14, 1996, after six months in jail awaiting his fate, the judge sentenced Mr. Nelson to 3 1/2 years in prison. He served every day until his statutory release date. His refusal to participate in sexual deviancy counselling landed him in solitary confinement for a total of 15 months.While he was trying to stay alive in prison, Ms. Fordham set her self up as a leader of a group home for men caught in the court system.
A later police investigation, the results of which were part of Mr. Nelson's appeal, showed the home was a snake-pit of drugs, alcohol, and sex.Here, she refined her skill at using the justice system as her weapon of choice. She reported breaches of court orders when there were no breaches. This landed several men in jail.
In January 1998, Andre Emile Masson, 26, got the same treatment as Mr. Nelson -- a rape allegation with almost the same details. This led to his arrest.In August 1998, Ms. Fordham accused Allan Kamen and Phillippe Francois of brutally assaulting her while she was praying at a grotto in Vanier. Ottawa police Sgt. Paul Turner investigated, but after the men produced solid alibis, and Ms. Fordham refused a polygraph, she was charged with public mischief for making a false complaint.This touched off the police investigation that exposed Ms. Fordham as a calculating liar willing to abuse the courts.
She was found guilty of public mischief last summer after a trial in which she also accused Mr. Kamen of sexually assaulting her while Mr. Francois watched.Cathy Fordham's credibility was shot. The charges against Mr. Masson were dropped. Others proceedings were discontinued. However, Mr. Nelson was still in prison.
He was paroled in March 1999 and successfully completed this in early 2000.During this time, Ms. Fordham was charged with making a false police complaint again and threatening to kill a former boyfriend. These charges are still before the courts.In his appeal, lawyer Todd Ducharme relied heavily on new evidence of Ms. Fordham's character, and how Judge Fraser, who noted Ms. Fordham's testimony at trial wasn't "prefect," misjudged her credibility.
Mr. Hall at trial, the appeal said, raised many issues that should have raised a reasonable doubt Mr. Nelson was guilty.So compelling was yesterday's appeal, Scott Hutchison, a seasoned Crown attorney, did something he'd never done before -- asked for an acquittal. Afterwards, he shook Mr. Nelson's hand.
"The right thing happened today," he said.
Mr. Ducharme called yesterday one of the most rewarding days of his career.
"It is a cautionary tale," he said. "People make false allegations, and they make false allegations about serious crimes like sexual assault. I hope it makes people remember why people accused of crimes are presumed innocent."
Yesterday, after being informed Mr. Nelson was acquitted, Ms. Fordham held to her story. "I had no idea this was even going on," she said. "If I had known about this, I would have done something to try and fight it. I would never accuse anybody of anything they didn't do."

Firefox or Internet Explorer:Safe and not so safe

Since information security is my hobby/job/obsession, this particular topic is near and dear to my heart. Just about everyone reading this has seen computers that have been beaten down with spyware - the evil junk that hijacks IE and renders a system virtually useless. How many times have you been called to a family member’s house to clean up their system? Or had to call your techie friend to come clean yours? It’s often quite awkward - the system slows to a crawl and every other mouse click conjures up some species of perverse, obscene image. What most people don’t realize, however, is that there is a very simple and powerful way to defend your system (and/or the systems of your loved ones) in one fell swoop.Don’t use Internet Explorer.What makes other browsers better than IE at protecting vs. spyware and other attacks? Well, it’s simple really - most other browsers don’t make it so easy to install malicious software on your system without you knowing about it. IE makes it relatively trivial through two features called ActiveX and Active Scripting. These technologies were designed specifically for the purpose of giving Web sites more control over a user’s computer. Unfortunately, as we have seen with exploit after exploit - that’s not always a good thing.

In addition to the spyware issues, IE in general has had a terrible track record when it comes to all types of serious security issues. For years now, it’s seemed like every time you turn around there is a new way to have your computer taken over via Internet Explorer. Put “internet explorer” and “allow an attacker to execute commands” (with the quotes) into Google and you’ll see what I mean.

In IE’s defense, many anti-Microsoft types will claim that it’s not possible to lock down IE at all. This is not true. It is possible - but if and only if you have a fair amount of technical know-how on the subject, and the time to do it. My personal view, however, is that tools such as Internet browsers should not require expertise and configuration time to be able to use them safely.

Standards

This is likely to get me in some hot water with my fellow security enthusiasts, but I find this issue to be of even more concern than that of IE’s security. The Internet works for one simple reason - everything at its core has been built on agreements that bind it together. Whether a computer is connected from California or Newfoundland, it’s going to speak the same language and obey the same rules - the rules defined by standards. If this weren’t the case there would be no Internet at all. These agreements are forged by a body of people whose goal is nothing short of designing a better and more efficient Internet for everyone. Microsoft, for some odd reason, seems bent on breaking stride with these agreed-upon standards. Case in point: the next time you’re in a bookstore, head over to the technology section and pick up a book on XHTML or CSS. These are two major Web standards that deal with how Web pages are displayed to users, and within any book on the subjects you will find one common theme:

The absolute worst browser when it comes to supporting the standards is Internet Explorer.

Page after page in these books will reveal features supported in other browsers, but not in IE. Ask yourself why a company would choose not to support standards that benefit everyone? The way I see it, it’s for precisely one of two reasons - either they are unable to, or they don’t want to. Given the fact that they are a multi-billion dollar company (one of the richest on the planet), I can’t help but lean toward the second option. Without going into too much detail, they have their own plans, and those plans involve implementing their own standard and forcing it upon the world. Call me a geek/hippie, but the idea of a multi-billion dollar corporation snubbing its nose at agreed-upon standards is nothing short of infuriating.

Options

Lucky for us, we have alternatives. The good news is that the alternative browsers are actually as good or better than IE. There are many out there, but in my opinion the Mozilla products are the best. I personally prefer and recommend Mozilla Firefox. Not only does it keep your browsing sessions a lot more secure and spyware-free, but it also supports the standards religiously and has a wide range of powerful features. Arguably the biggest benefit to using a Mozilla-based product is something called tabbed browsing. What this allows you to do is have multiple pages open within a single browser window. Rather than going from window to window in the taskbar, you can simply switch between clearly visible tabs, all within the same view. You can even do this and many other commands via the keyboard if you are into that sort of thing.

Using Firefox will not require any major shift in your daily browsing habits. It’ll import your favorites automatically, and you can benefit from the improved security starting the first time you open it. With the popup blocking enabled, you can breath quite a bit easier when browsing to unknown sites. Attempts to install garbage on your system that could have easily succeeded if you were using IE will simply be ignored by Firefox. Plus, the whole time you’re browsing you’ll know that you are doing your part to keep the soul of the Internet alive by choosing to use a browser whose developers actually care about standards.

Of course, I still use IE. (pause for effect) …it’s how I get my Windows security updates. : Seriously though - Windows Update is a must, and it only works in IE, so that in itself is a good reason to fire up IE once in a while. Aside from Windows Update though, there is still the occasional site that I go to that doesn’t look right in any other browser. Those sites, by the way, are all the more reason to not use IE. They weren’t written according to the standards, and they look bad in any browser other than IE as a result of that fact. Using IE all the time just because the occasional site is designed so poorly as to look like crap in other browsers is utterly bad form. I implore you not to give into this temptation.

Wrapping It Up

So, in closing, I leave you with two thoughts:

1. Due to the combination of ActiveX, scripting, and its integration with the Windows operating system, Internet Explorer is more vulnerable to attack than many other browsers.
2. The designers of Internet Explorer have purposely turned their back on the standards designed to benefit the Internet as a whole. They have done this for years, continue to do it today, and appear to have nothing but their own interests at heart.

I ask that you consider these points and pull down a copy of Firefox, Opera, or another alternative browser. Run it for a week and see how it feels. As mentioned above, I personally recommend Firefox due to its excellent development team and large user base. Once you have had some time to get to know your new onramp to the Web, I think you’ll find that you’ll wish you had switched sooner. No longer will you have to worry about garbage clogging up your system because of your browser, or having to make a mad rush for a patch every time an IE vulnerability is released.

Finally, and most importantly - spread the word. It’s time now for us to put alternative browsers on the map and let it be known that we are aware of our choices. We need not settle for what we are being fed when there are better, more secure alternatives out there.

Windows Key - WorldStart Computer Tips and Computer Help

Q:
I just noticed a key on my keyboard that I've never really used before because I have no idea what it's for. It's in between the left Ctrl and Alt and has a "flying window" on it. Can you help?

A:
Ahh, the Windows key. I remember the first time I noticed her... She sat lifeless until someone explained to me the power she possessed. And now I will pass the knowledge on to you so that together we can rule the univ..., well, our computers...

The Windows key can be used in conjunction with other keys to act as a keyboard shortcut for faster access to menu commands. Now, while the Alt key tends to open program menus (ex: Alt+F opens the File menu and Alt+E opens the Edit menu) and the Ctrl key performs actual operations (ex: Ctrl+C will copy and Ctrl+V will paste), the Windows key will open various Windows tools...

Windows key + R will open the Start menu's Run box
Windows key + F will open the Start menu's Find window
Windows key + E will quickly launch Explorer
Windows key + Pause/Break will open the System Properties window
Windows key + M will Minimize all windows
Windows key + Shift + M will undo Minimize all windows
Windows key + D will switch between minimizing all open programs and showing them all
Windows key + Tab will cycle through items on the taskbar
Windows key by itself will open the Start menu

You can also open programs or folders on your desktop by pressing the Windows key + the first letter of the program/folder/shortcut + Enter . Sounds kinda tedious, but if you're in a bind with your mouse, it can come in quite handy.