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Largest ever miscarriage of justice?

I suspect the investigation of the culpability of those at the PO who decided to press ahead with these prosecutions in the face of evidence that Horizon was flawed will follow the same pattern as Hillsborough, kicked down the road until such time as bringing them to justice becomes all but impossible.
 
Blue Mountain said:
Can you please not post links to Xitter? They're on my banlist for sites never to be connected to by my computer. If there's a canonical link, kindly post it instead.
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Also, this is a link to a Twitter post that itself links to another Twitter post. If you're going to post links to Twitter, why not link to the post that actually contains the video (and the follow-up videos) rather than one that just links to it?
 
Filippo Lippi said:
A former postmaster on BBC East Midlands Today has just said that he was being investigated for a £7000 discrepancy by representatives of the Post Office and Fujitsu in his shop when they all witnessed Horizon make a transaction on its own!
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Apparently, Horizon would make transactions after a certain time, when something was being held in a bundle. It sounds like if you were to put items into a basket on Amazon, after a while Amazon treats it like a purchase, whether you want it or not.
 
I understand all investigations and prosecutions were carried out by the post office with no involvement from the police. Was the way the PO operated different from the police and did how the PO carry out investigations and prosecutions end up being a factor in wrongful convictions.
 
Welshman said:
I understand all investigations and prosecutions were carried out by the post office with no involvement from the police. Was the way the PO operated different from the police and did how the PO carry out investigations and prosecutions end up being a factor in wrongful convictions.
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Well, the lead investigator still doesn't seem to think it was his job to find the cause of the discrepancies, instead to accept the Horizon system as faultless unless told otherwise by his superiors, regardless of any evidence he might come across to the contrary. Presumably he didn't think it was his job to flag potential problems with the system to anyone either.
 
jimbob said:
The difference being that YT tags don't like jumping to a particular timestamp.
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I put it in without the timestamp initially, but it said there was an error, so I figured I would add the timestamp if it was going to be a normal link.

It was probably just a glitch. C'est la vie.
 
Welshman said:
I understand all investigations and prosecutions were carried out by the post office with no involvement from the police. Was the way the PO operated different from the police and did how the PO carry out investigations and prosecutions end up being a factor in wrongful convictions.
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If the police had been involved, they would have been assured by PO management and Fujitsu that Horizon was working fine and uncovering criminality by sub-postmasters. The police, happy to get detections for their statistics and not having any experience with Horizon and being poor in general at dealing with financial crimes, would have taken the easy route.

In Scotland and Northern Ireland, it was not the PO who prosecuted, but instead the prosecution services, COPFS and PPSNI, counterparts to the CPS in E&W. Since they were happily prosecuting based on PO/Fujitsu evidence, there is no reason why the CPS would not also prosecute. Such was the cover up by the PO and Fujitsu, they managed to fool so many lawyers into thinking that prosecution was the correct course of action. Those who dissented, were sidelined or even silenced.

The PO investigators are supposed to do what the police are supposed to do, gather evidence, including exculpatory evidence and present that to the prosecutor. But, sadly, in so many cases, investigators go on crusades, convinced they are fighting evil criminals and to get a result, they ignore exculpatory evidence and use tactics to pressurise people into admitting their guilt.

What we have seen here is yet another failure by an authority in the UK with investigatory powers, to be fair and gather all the evidence. Others, such as HMRC and even the PSPCA need to be set new standards and face prosecution themselves for failing to be fair and perverting the course of justice.
 
jimbob said:
Well, the lead investigator still doesn't seem to think it was his job to find the cause of the discrepancies, instead to accept the Horizon system as faultless unless told otherwise by his superiors, regardless of any evidence he might come across to the contrary. Presumably he didn't think it was his job to flag potential problems with the system to anyone either.
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Therein lies the problem with many investigators, including the police and prosecutors. They pick a side, decide too early who is guilty and ignore exculpatory and obvious lines of enquiry.

One thing for sure now is, if a computer system suggests someone is stealing, the police and prosecutors are going to have to prove the computer system was working at that time and there is other evidence to corroborate the theft.

Many sub-postmasters asked those investigating them, where has the money gone, I do not have it? That was a line of enquiry the investigators should have pursued. If the sub-postmasters had stolen money, then find and follow the trail of that money. Look for evidence, such as a healthy bank account that takes in discrepancy amounts each week, or that brand new expensive car parked outside the PO, or how the third luxury cruise of the year was paid for.
 
Nessie said:
Therein lies the problem with many investigators, including the police and prosecutors. They pick a side, decide too early who is guilty and ignore exculpatory and obvious lines of enquiry.

One thing for sure now is, if a computer system suggests someone is stealing, the police and prosecutors are going to have to prove the computer system was working at that time and there is other evidence to corroborate the theft.
Many sub-postmasters asked those investigating them, where has the money gone, I do not have it? That was a line of enquiry the investigators should have pursued. If the sub-postmasters had stolen money, then find and follow the trail of that money. Look for evidence, such as a healthy bank account that takes in discrepancy amounts each week, or that brand new expensive car parked outside the PO, or how the third luxury cruise of the year was paid for.
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Sadly not the case, at least in E&W. It will require a change in the law to change the "legal" assumption that "digital" evidence is considered reliable unless shown not to be. Prosecutors will still not have to demonstrate that the digital evidence they are providing is reliable, the defence will have to show that it is not.

Which is what was behind the strategy of the PO, they had to hide from the defence any evidence the defence could use to undercut the reliability of the digital evidence. That's where the perverting the course of justice came into it, they knowingly withheld that knowledge, and actively lied about it, they knew Horizon was unreliable. They knew untraceable remote logging was possible or rather that there was no apparent logging of such remote access, any defence team would have used that knowledge to immediately introduce "reasonable doubt"* about the evidence being submitted by the prosecution. (As a note - unlogged remote access may well have been traceable if people had ever looked for such traces.) Also, many of these cases were settled by a "guilty" plea, so the evidence was never contested in a court of law.


*Yes - I know the legal term is not "reasonable doubt" but most reasonable people understand what that phrase means.
 
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Filippo Lippi said:
I hope that investigator cannot sleep at night (see comments above about It staff), but at least he's come clean. There's loads more who haven't
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He hasn't even remotely "come clean", Bradshaw is still denying and lying.
 
Nessie said:
Apparently, Horizon would make transactions after a certain time, when something was being held in a bundle. It sounds like if you were to put items into a basket on Amazon, after a while Amazon treats it like a purchase, whether you want it or not.
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It would cache transactions and later commit them, not an unusual concept to compensate for poor connectivity, but one that users weren't trained on. IIRR this was discussed in the BBC programme back in 2015.
User training costs money and eats into the profit margin on IT projects.
 
Welshman said:
I understand all investigations and prosecutions were carried out by the post office with no involvement from the police. Was the way the PO operated different from the police and did how the PO carry out investigations and prosecutions end up being a factor in wrongful convictions.
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The PO staff were told that Horizon didn't make mistakes and to act on this. I would expect a slight degree of skepticism on the part of the police (who were involved in some cases, as were the the ODPP and Crown Office).
 
Darat said:
Sadly not the case, at least in E&W. It will require a change in the law to change the "legal" assumption that "digital" evidence is considered reliable unless shown not to be. Prosecutors will still not have to demonstrate that the digital evidence they are providing is reliable, the defence will have to show that it is not.

Which is what was behind the strategy of the PO, they had to hide from the defence any evidence the defence could use to undercut the reliability of the digital evidence. That's where the perverting the course of justice came into it, they knowingly withheld that knowledge, and actively lied about it, they knew Horizon was unreliable. They knew untraceable remote logging was possible or rather that there was no apparent logging of such remote access, any defence team would have used that knowledge to immediately introduce "reasonable doubt"* about the evidence being submitted by the prosecution. (As a note - unlogged remote access may well have been traceable if people had ever looked for such traces.) Also, many of these cases were settled by a "guilty" plea, so the evidence was never contested in a court of law.


*Yes - I know the legal term is not "reasonable doubt" but most reasonable people understand what that phrase means.
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What law are you referring to?
 
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