A Christchurch man who wrongly spent three years in jail on sex charges after a judge made a procedural error is seeking hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation.

Mervyn Finlayson, 60 — a stroke victim with a serious heart condition — was jailed for six years in 2000 on charges of indecently assaulting a boy aged nine, inducing the boy to do an indecent act on him, and two charges of sodomy.

Finlayson’s appeal said the trial judge in his case, Colin Doherty, made a procedural error by failing to provide balancing evidence from the defence case when he replayed the boy’s evidential video to the jury during its deliberations.