We are often told of the importance of checking our work for spelling mistakes, but the consequences of failing to do this are rarely as severe as for a man from Thailand who ended up spending three extra years in prison because of a typo.
The 53-year-old Kamjai Khong Thavorn should have been released from an Indonesian jail in 2007 after serving a 20-year sentence for heroin possession – but a clerical error wrongly stated his first year in prison was 1997 instead of 1987, the Jakarta Globe reported.
Kamjai was released yesterday after he told Indonesia’s justice minister of the mistake during a chance meeting on the minister’s tour of the maximum security prison in Central Java.
“We realised the mistake that was made, so he was released unconditionally,” the prison’s warden told the newspaper.
Costly Error
