Largest ever miscarriage of justice?

[Worm]

One of the key parts of the process for me was the legal strategy that the PO took.

1. Investigate
2. Put forward charges for False Accounting and Theft
3. Offer a deal to drop Theft charge if the Sub-postmaster pleads guilty to false accounting
4. Next

The crucial point being that they didn't have any actual evidence for Theft, so should never have charged for it and wouldn't have succeeded if they did. Which means they knew there was something wrong with the whole case. They didn't just take Fujitsu's word for it - they investigated, found no evidence of theft, but decided to proceed with charges anyway.

I'm not sure what heading that falls under - perverting the course of justice, false accusation ?

 

[theprestige]

Extortion?

 

[Nessie]

1. I'm surprised you didn't know about the Scottish situation, given that private prosecutions are vanishingly rare and require court approval.
2. The CPS can block private prosecutions.

Why would the CPS doubt PO prosecutions, that in Scotland were being run by COPFS and were getting convictions? If the CPS blocked the PO in E&W, they would in effect also be saying that COPFS had got it wrong.

Attempts to put blame on the CPS look very politically motivated, due to Kier Starmer's past role there.

 

[Nessie]

Responsibility extends to Japan. This tweet is not new now, it was originally tweeted in October 2022;

https://twitter.com/TomWitherow/status/1579842440290533387

"NEW: Tony Blair went ahead with the £1bn IT system at the heart of the Post Office Scandal despite being told it had scores of failings.
A briefing to the PM said: 'Currently 146 [faults] have not been resolved'.
Inquiry heard he was lobbied by the IT provider, Japan's Fujitsu."
"The Japanese ambassador got involved, telling Blair the failure of Horizon would have ‘serious repercussions’ for Fujitsu’s int'national standing.
Memos reveal Blair was told cancelling the project would spark a legal battle with Fujitsu, hurt trade with Japan and cost 270 jobs."

 

[smartcooky]

I agree with Nessie on the issue of charging perverting the course of justice v fraud.

IANAL, but as I understand UK law, there are ten elements of a fraud charge, all of which must be proved for a fraud charge to succeed....

-False representation
-Untrue or Misleading statements or behaviour
-Dishonesty
-Gain or Loss
-A Failure to Disclose Information
-Establishing a Legal Duty
-Abuse of Position
-Possession or Control
-Show articles and materials of the fraud
-Obtaining of services or benefits

It will require a crapload of detailed documentation and complex evidence to prove a such a wide ranging, multi-layered fraud case such as this, and will take years to put a watertight case together.

On the other hand, proving a charge of perverting the course of justice is relatively straightforward, and there is ample evidence that has already been established as fact.

Perverting the course of justice can be ANY of the following

-Intimidating or interfering with a case witness, juror or judge
-The disposal, or fabricating, of evidence
-Falsely accusing someone of a crime, resulting in their arrest.

Only one of these has to be shown to be true, but it can be easily shown that the Post Office committed all three on many occasions.

Intimidating or interfering with a case witness, juror or judge
The Post Office lied to the sub-postmasters. They told each one of them that they were the only one who was having difficulty with Horizon. In effect, they isolated them, and threatened them with prosecution, and when some postmasters stood their ground, they did prosecute them.

The disposal, or fabricating, of evidence
The Post Office and Fujitsu knew there were serious issues with the reliability of Horizon, and they went to great lengths to cover this up, even to the point of destroying evidence by shredding documents and deleting digital files that might reveal what was going on.

Falsely accusing someone of a crime, resulting in their arrest.
This is what they did, routinely to over 700 sub-postmasters. They actively hid the evidence that the fault lay with the Horizon software and not with the sub-postmasters, and then they false prosecuted the sub postmasters.

Also, there were multiple people who had meetings in which they resolved to cover up what happened. Meeting from which orders were given to Post Office employees to destroy documents and evidence. Those meetings are evidence that multiple people who worked together to cover it up - so could all be charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

There is a well-understood principle in prosecution of criminal acts... charge those crimes that are easiest to prove rather that those that are difficult to prove. Perverting the course of justice will be a relative doddle co prove compared with fraud.

 

[Filippo Lippi]

There's an army of contemptible people involved in this, but I must admit to holding a particular odium for that army of workers who were involved in the project at Fujitsu, but have remained silent. Yes, it must have been hard to come forward in the early stages, before the publicity really got going, but later?

 

[jimbob]

I agree with Nessie on the issue of charging perverting the course of justice v fraud.

IANAL, but as I understand UK law, there are ten elements of a fraud charge, all of which must be proved for a fraud charge to succeed....

-False representation -Untrue or Misleading statements or behaviour -Dishonesty -Gain or Loss -A Failure to Disclose Information -Establishing a Legal Duty -Abuse of Position -Possession or Control -Show articles and materials of the fraud -Obtaining of services or benefits
It will require a crapload of detailed documentation and complex evidence to prove a such a wide ranging, multi-layered fraud case such as this, and will take years to put a watertight case together.

On the other hand, proving a charge of perverting the course of justice is relatively straightforward, and there is ample evidence that has already been established as fact.

Perverting the course of justice can be ANY of the following

-Intimidating or interfering with a case witness, juror or judge
-The disposal, or fabricating, of evidence
-Falsely accusing someone of a crime, resulting in their arrest.

Only one of these has to be shown to be true, but it can be easily shown that the Post Office committed all three on many occasions.

Intimidating or interfering with a case witness, juror or judge
The Post Office lied to the sub-postmasters. They told each one of them that they were the only one who was having difficulty with Horizon. In effect, they isolated them, and threatened them with prosecution, and when some postmasters stood their ground, they did prosecute them.

The disposal, or fabricating, of evidence
The Post Office and Fujitsu knew there were serious issues with the reliability of Horizon, and they went to great lengths to cover this up, even to the point of destroying evidence by shredding documents and deleting digital files that might reveal what was going on.

Falsely accusing someone of a crime, resulting in their arrest.
This is what they did, routinely to over 700 sub-postmasters. They actively hid the evidence that the fault lay with the Horizon software and not with the sub-postmasters, and then they false prosecuted the sub postmasters.

Also, there were multiple people who had meetings in which they resolved to cover up what happened. Meeting from which orders were given to Post Office employees to destroy documents and evidence. Those meetings are evidence that multiple people who worked together to cover it up - so could all be charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

There is a well-understood principle in prosecution of criminal acts... charge those crimes that are easiest to prove rather that those that are difficult to prove. Perverting the course of justice will be a relative doddle co prove compared with fraud.

It is right that the police to investigate because many postmasters did indeed suffer financial loss due to falsely being told they owed money. If some of the people insisting on the compensation knew their requests were based on false information, I would think it might be a reasonable conclusion that it was fraud and not just incompetence.

ETA. Those who would be in line for fraud charges would quite possibly be a different (if overlapping) group of post office staff, compared to those who should definitely be charged with perverting the course of justice.

 

[Pixel42]

There's an army of contemptible people involved in this, but I must admit to holding a particular odium for that army of workers who were involved in the project at Fujitsu, but have remained silent. Yes, it must have been hard to come forward in the early stages, before the publicity really got going, but later?

According to the TV dramatisation it was a Fujitsu whistleblower that confirmed they did indeed have remote access to the postmasters' systems, despite all the denials that this was the case.

The impression I got from the TV series and the accompanying documentary is that there was an army of Fujitsu tech support guys working to correct the problems their software was causing by manually correcting them using their remote access. They mostly succeeded, but when they failed the discrepancies remained and the postmasters were blamed.

The problems themselves seemed to arise when connection between their hub and the individual terminals was lost, which would explain why most of those affected were small rural POs where the connection was most likely to go out occasionally.

There was one incident when a postmaster was on the Horizon helpline following the instructions to fix a discrepancy but instead watched it double in front of her eyes. I suspect the support guy was genuinely trying to fix it but got a sign wrong somewhere, so instead of making it go to zero they made it twice as bad.

 

[smartcooky]

It is right that the police to investigate because many postmasters did indeed suffer financial loss due to falsely being told they owed money. If some of the people insisting on the compensation knew their requests were based on false information, I would think it might be a reasonable conclusion that it was fraud and not just incompetence.

ETA. Those who would be in line for fraud charges would quite possibly be a different (if overlapping) group of post office staff, compared to those who should definitely be charged with perverting the course of justice.

I think you are missing the most important thing. A fraud investigation is going to take many, many years. Some of those sub-postmasters have so far waited over 25 years for justice, and they are not getting any younger. Should they really be made to wait all the extra years? Would it not be better to charge perverting the course of justice first, which by the looks of the evidence they already have, could see them good to go in short order.

It is fairly obvious to me that the Post Office and the bureaucrats in the UK government are trying to procrastinate, obfuscate and delay as much as possible in the hope that the sub-postmasters can be pressured to settling for smaller amounts of compensation, or that they might start dying off and solve their problem for them.

I would rather to see things expedited. IMO, EVERY sub-postmaster who was accused and/or prosecuted and/or made to pay monies they did not owe, ought to be granted a blanket Royal Pardon by the King. Then the issue of compensation can proceed and be expedited.

 

[Filippo Lippi]

According to the TV dramatisation it was a Fujitsu whistleblower that confirmed they did indeed have remote access to the postmasters' systems, despite all the denials that this was the case.

The impression I got from the TV series and the accompanying documentary is that there was an army of Fujitsu tech support guys working to correct the problems their software was causing by manually correcting them using their remote access. They mostly succeeded, but when they failed the discrepancies remained and the postmasters were blamed.

The problems themselves seemed to arise when connection between their hub and the individual terminals was lost, which would explain why most of those affected were small rural POs where the connection was most likely to go out occasionally.

There was one incident when a postmaster was on the Horizon helpline following the instructions to fix a discrepancy but instead watched it double in front of her eyes. I suspect the support guy was genuinely trying to fix it but got a sign wrong somewhere, so instead of making it go to zero they made it twice as bad.

Yes, one guy. Hat's off to him. Because, as you say, there was, at least, one team of support staff fixing things on a system developed by a team of programmers, tested by a team of testers, with swathes of managers. None of whom have come forward. Apparently.

 

[Nessie]

Yes, one guy. Hat's off to him. Because, as you say, there was, at least, one team of support staff fixing things on a system developed by a team of programmers, tested by a team of testers, with swathes of managers. None of whom have come forward. Apparently.

I wonder what Fujitsu have done to get the silence of the staff employed to go into Horizon and make changes to the system.

 

[Pixel42]

Yes, one guy. Hat's off to him. Because, as you say, there was, at least, one team of support staff fixing things on a system developed by a team of programmers, tested by a team of testers, with swathes of managers. None of whom have come forward. Apparently.

From what I've gathered I would say Fujitsu must shoulder a large share of the blame for the whole fiasco. The Post Office's management pretty obviously had no clue how the system worked and simply took what Fujitsu said as gospel, including that they didn't have remote access to the individual terminals - a barefaced lie, like "you're the only one who's having a problem".

Why only one Fujitsu guy had the courage to come forward is something I hope will become clear as criminal prosecutions are pursued over the next few years.

 

[Nessie]

From what I've gathered I would say Fujitsu must shoulder a large share of the blame for the whole fiasco. The Post Office's management pretty obviously had no clue how the system worked and simply took what Fujitsu said as gospel, including that they didn't have remote access to the individual terminals - a barefaced lie, like "you're the only one who's having a problem".

Why only one Fujitsu guy had the courage to come forward is something I hope will become clear as criminal prosecutions are pursued over the next few years.

I wonder if that was an error, letting the sub-postmaster union member into see the Horizon operations in action. Fujitsu tried to cover up what had happened, and I think the £40k shortfall that appeared on his system the day after the visit is the single most shocking event of the whole scandal.

 

[jimbob]

I think you are missing the most important thing. A fraud investigation is going to take many, many years. Some of those sub-postmasters have so far waited over 25 years for justice, and they are not getting any younger. Should they really be made to wait all the extra years? Would it not be better to charge perverting the course of justice first, which by the looks of the evidence they already have, could see them good to go in short order.

It is fairly obvious to me that the Post Office and the bureaucrats in the UK government are trying to procrastinate, obfuscate and delay as much as possible in the hope that the sub-postmasters can be pressured to settling for smaller amounts of compensation, or that they might start dying off and solve their problem for them.

I would rather to see things expedited. IMO, EVERY sub-postmaster who was accused and/or prosecuted and/or made to pay monies they did not owe, ought to be granted a blanket Royal Pardon by the King. Then the issue of compensation can proceed and be expedited.

I see no reason why the completely different (easier to prove and more serious) offenses of perverting the course of justice and perjury would need to wait on a fraud case involving a different but overlapped group of people.

 

[smartcooky]

I see no reason why the completely different (easier to prove and more serious) offenses of perverting the course of justice and perjury would need to wait on a fraud case involving a different but overlapped group of people.

Nor do I, and and that is what you glean from what I wrote, then you haven't been paying attention.

 

[Darat]

https://www.computerweekly.com/news...re-is-moment-to-change-digital-evidence-rules

For those that don't know Computer Weekly was behind much of the early exposure of the scandal. The article above explains one of the major reasons it all happened, which was a change in the way a court would look at a case that relied on evidence from a computer system and how a jury would be instructed and why the post office prosecutors worked so hard to hide the known problems with Horizon. Juries were instructed that Horizon data should be considered reliable unless it was proved to be unreliable. I remember reading someone here saying something like "did the jury not have their own computers why did they trust Horizon?". The reason is they were told to consider it reliable.

 

[Andy_Ross]

All the tory mouthpieces got a WhatsApp this morning urging them to make up lies about Starmer not taking over the prosecution.

 

[Darat]

Justice starts with restitution. As I've been saying all along - a blanket pardon needs to be issued and all the people pardoned should immediately get something like a £50,000 payout and then a review body can look at each individual case for exact pay-outs. That body needs to be resourced so it can review all cases for payouts within a 2 year period. The assumption should always be in favour of the people and against the PO. That body could also be tasked with payouts to everyone who had to put in their own money to make right a reported discrepancy but weren't taken to court. That should all be financed by the post office.

Whilst the payouts are ongoing any criminal investigations can continue but there needs to be no hold-up in the pardons and payouts while waiting for such investigations to complete.

 

[jimbob]

Justice starts with restitution. As I've been saying all along - a blanket pardon needs to be issued and all the people pardoned should immediately get something like a £50,000 payout and then a review body can look at each individual case for exact pay-outs. That body needs to be resourced so it can review all cases for payouts within a 2 year period. The assumption should always be in favour of the people and against the PO. That body could also be tasked with payouts to everyone who had to put in their own money to make right a reported discrepancy but weren't taken to court. That should all be financed by the post office.

Whilst the payouts are ongoing any criminal investigations can continue but there needs to be no hold-up in the pardons and payouts while waiting for such investigations to complete.

Absolutely

 

[Worm]

Paula Vennells has agreeed to hand back her CBE.

Hopefully that's doesn't blunt the anger and criticism.