Largest ever miscarriage of justice?

Garrison

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Garrison
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So some years back the Post Office in the UK installed a new computer system and lo and behold the system revealed a large number of cases of what looked like theft and embezzlement. The accused insisted the computer system was at fault, the Post Office insisted it was perfect and many people were bankrupted, disgraced, convicted and in some cases imprisoned.

What comes next is all too predictable, evidence emerges that the Post Office knew the system was flawed, the post office was sued and forced to payout compensation to those who lost livelihoods. Today it was the turn of those convicted in court and in a single day 39 people had their convictions quashed:

Convicted Post Office workers have names cleared
 
Not sure if it is the largest ever. However my parents were caught up in it
They had a sub post office. Mother was an ex maths teacher. She never had issues until the new system came in and there stated to be discrepancies with the weekly balance. Often they had to put their own money in to make up the shortfall. I guess those in court and prison were the ones who refused to do that.
In the end they just shut the doors and closed the post office down. It is unfortunately too late for them to share the good news but speaking to others in their network at the time they all knew it was the system that was flawed.
 
Heh. No system is perfect. The courts must render judgement without necessarily knowing all the facts. In many cases, important facts are unknowable, or undiscoverable at the time. Is it fair to say that justice has miscarried, if the rule of law is followed and the standard of "beyond reasonable doubt" is met?

Now, if a corrupt prosecutor railroads the accused, or an incompetent defense counsel fails to do their job, I'd call that a miscarriage of justice.

If a cop gives a brother cop a break on some infraction, that's a miscarriage of justice.

If prison guards arrange or allow extrajudicial punishment of prisoners under their care, that's a miscarriage of justice.

But in most cases, where rule of law was followed, but later the judgement is overturned on a technicality or because of new evidence, I would not say there was a miscarriage of justice. The information in the OP is not enough for me to determine whether justice actually miscarried in that case.

I'm not even sure that justice miscarried in California vs OJ Simpson.
 
I think if an innocent person is found guilty (let alone dozens of innocent people), then it's reasonable to call that a miscarriage of justice even if it doesn't meet your particular definition of "miscarriage".
 
theprestige said:
Heh. No system is perfect. The courts must render judgement without necessarily knowing all the facts. In many cases, important facts are unknowable, or undiscoverable at the time. Is it fair to say that justice has miscarried, if the rule of law is followed and the standard of "beyond reasonable doubt" is met?
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Right there is where your opinion breaks down and fails in this case. The important facts were not unknowable; the Post Office ignored them and continued to accuse people of theft knowing the system was faulty.

"At the Royal Courts of Justice in London, Lord Justice Holroyde said the Post Office "knew there were serious issues about the reliability of Horizon" and had a "clear duty to investigate" the system's defects."
​
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56718036
"Sub-postmasters complained about bugs in the system after it reported shortfalls, some of which amounted to many thousands of pounds."​

During a civil court case brought by 550 postmasters in 2017, the Post Office admitted remote access without the postmaster's knowledge was possible, but they claimed it was an honest mistake and had not been aware of this fact... they lied. Evidence shown to MP Rachel Reeves, the Post Office inquiry leader, showed that Post Office managers had known about remote access since 2011.

"It is very serious that the Post Office were sitting on information that told them, and could have told the courts, and their sub postmasters, that other people could access their systems."

The investigation reveals how Post Office managers ignored reports of multiple faults with the Horizon computer system.

"The Post Office prosecuted postmasters over missing money despite having evidence its own computer system could be to blame.

Hundreds were accused after the Horizon system showed cash shortfalls at their branches.

But a BBC Panorama investigation has revealed managers knew problems with Horizon could make money disappear."

When a company prosecutes hundreds of people for theft when they KNOW the evidence they are using is defective, but they keep the defects a secret, and the prosecutions succeed, sending people to jail and ruining their lives.. that is the very definition of a miscarriage of justice!
 
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Matthew Best said:
I think if an innocent person is found guilty (let alone dozens of innocent people), then it's reasonable to call that a miscarriage of justice even if it doesn't meet your particular definition of "miscarriage".
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By theprestige’s definition it was a miscarriage of justice.
 
smartcooky said:
Right there is where your opinion breaks down and fails in this case. The important facts were not unknowable; the Post Office ignored them and continued to accuse people of theft knowing the system was faulty.

"At the Royal Courts of Justice in London, Lord Justice Holroyde said the Post Office "knew there were serious issues about the reliability of Horizon" and had a "clear duty to investigate" the system's defects."
​
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56718036
"Sub-postmasters complained about bugs in the system after it reported shortfalls, some of which amounted to many thousands of pounds."​

During a civil court case brought by 550 postmasters in 2017, the Post Office admitted remote access without the postmaster's knowledge was possible, but they claimed it was an honest mistake and had not been aware of this fact... they lied. Evidence shown to MP Rachel Reeves, the Post Office inquiry leader, showed that Post Office managers had known about remote access since 2011.

"It is very serious that the Post Office were sitting on information that told them, and could have told the courts, and their sub postmasters, that other people could access their systems."

The investigation reveals how Post Office managers ignored reports of multiple faults with the Horizon computer system.

"The Post Office prosecuted postmasters over missing money despite having evidence its own computer system could be to blame.

Hundreds were accused after the Horizon system showed cash shortfalls at their branches.

But a BBC Panorama investigation has revealed managers knew problems with Horizon could make money disappear."

When a company prosecutes hundreds of people for theft when they KNOW the evidence they are using is defective, but they keep the defects a secret, and the prosecutions succeed, sending people to jail and ruining their lives.. that is the very definition of a miscarriage of justice!
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And this is where it really breaks down, because of a holdover from past times the post office was also the prosecutor in these cases.

And these are the tip of the iceberg, there will be hundreds more to come.
 
smartcooky said:
Right there is where your opinion breaks down and fails in this case. The important facts were not unknowable; the Post Office ignored them and continued to accuse people of theft knowing the system was faulty.

"At the Royal Courts of Justice in London, Lord Justice Holroyde said the Post Office "knew there were serious issues about the reliability of Horizon" and had a "clear duty to investigate" the system's defects."
​
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56718036
"Sub-postmasters complained about bugs in the system after it reported shortfalls, some of which amounted to many thousands of pounds."​

During a civil court case brought by 550 postmasters in 2017, the Post Office admitted remote access without the postmaster's knowledge was possible, but they claimed it was an honest mistake and had not been aware of this fact... they lied. Evidence shown to MP Rachel Reeves, the Post Office inquiry leader, showed that Post Office managers had known about remote access since 2011.

"It is very serious that the Post Office were sitting on information that told them, and could have told the courts, and their sub postmasters, that other people could access their systems."

The investigation reveals how Post Office managers ignored reports of multiple faults with the Horizon computer system.

"The Post Office prosecuted postmasters over missing money despite having evidence its own computer system could be to blame.

Hundreds were accused after the Horizon system showed cash shortfalls at their branches.

But a BBC Panorama investigation has revealed managers knew problems with Horizon could make money disappear."

When a company prosecutes hundreds of people for theft when they KNOW the evidence they are using is defective, but they keep the defects a secret, and the prosecutions succeed, sending people to jail and ruining their lives.. that is the very definition of a miscarriage of justice!
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Those are good points, and I had already given them some thought, before I made my previous post. But there's probably no point discussing it if you don't agree with the basic premise. If you believe it's a miscarriage of justice when the justice system follows the rule of law and reaches a reasonable (but actually incorrect) conclusion based on the facts available at the time, then there's no reason for us to debate whether this particular case met that standard.
 
theprestige said:
If you believe it's a miscarriage of justice when the justice system follows the rule of law and reaches a reasonable (but actually incorrect) conclusion based on the facts available at the time, then there's no reason for us to debate whether this particular case met that standard.
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By definition if the Justice system reaches an incorrect verdict and finds people guilty who are not guilty but in fact innocent, that is a miscarriage of Justice. Whether or not the verdict was "reasonable" at the time is irrelevant the Justice system still failed.
 
Pacal said:
By definition if the Justice system reaches an incorrect verdict and finds people guilty who are not guilty but in fact innocent, that is a miscarriage of Justice. Whether or not the verdict was "reasonable" at the time is irrelevant the Justice system still failed.
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I think that definition can be true of a theoretical system of perfect justice.

I think in practice, real world justice systems should be driven towards that ideal, but not judged according to that definition
 
Garrison said:
So some years back the Post Office in the UK installed a new computer system and lo and behold the system revealed a large number of cases of what looked like theft and embezzlement. The accused insisted the computer system was at fault, the Post Office insisted it was perfect and many people were bankrupted, disgraced, convicted and in some cases imprisoned.

What comes next is all too predictable, evidence emerges that the Post Office knew the system was flawed, the post office was sued and forced to payout compensation to those who lost livelihoods. Today it was the turn of those convicted in court and in a single day 39 people had their convictions quashed:

Convicted Post Office workers have names cleared
Click to expand...

My impression is that accounting programs are pretty straightforward: money in, money out, money on hand. What was the actual problem with the program, and why did it take so long to identify it? Was money being stolen by unknown parties, or the numbers didn't add up, or what?
 
Matthew Best said:
I think if an innocent person is found guilty (let alone dozens of innocent people), then it's reasonable to call that a miscarriage of justice even if it doesn't meet your particular definition of "miscarriage".
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Guess he missed the part about the post office knew it was the computer system and allowed it to continue anyway.

Reading further there seems to be some kind of strange compartmentalization going on in the thought process.
 
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theprestige said:
Those are good points, and I had already given them some thought, before I made my previous post. But there's probably no point discussing it if you don't agree with the basic premise. If you believe it's a miscarriage of justice when the justice system follows the rule of law and reaches a reasonable (but actually incorrect) conclusion based on the facts available at the time, then there's no reason for us to debate whether this particular case met that standard.
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You are rescinding your “ if a corrupt prosecutor railroads the accused”?
 
Bob001 said:
My impression is that accounting programs are pretty straightforward: money in, money out, money on hand. What was the actual problem with the program, and why did it take so long to identify it? Was money being stolen by unknown parties, or the numbers didn't add up, or what?
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It was and is a very complicated system - the post office that is, their IT system has to interface with many different external systems.

Problems were reported from day one, they were ignored from day one. The Royal Mail knew there were problems but when they were prosecuting individuals they kept that information back from the defence.
 
Darat said:
It was and is a very complicated system - the post office that is, their IT system has to interface with many different external systems.

Problems were reported from day one, they were ignored from day one. The Royal Mail knew there were problems but when they were prosecuting individuals they kept that information back from the defence.
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I still think that before people get sent to prison there should be proof that the system works flawlessly. and if the prosecution doesn't provide it the defense should demand it. It sounds like postal executives are the people who need to be locked up.
 
Bob001 said:
I still think that before people get sent to prison there should be proof that the system works flawlessly. and if the prosecution doesn't provide it the defense should demand it.
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Sadly didn’t work out like that.


Bob001 said:
It sounds like postal executives are the people who need to be locked up.
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Yep and their legal folk all the way up to the QCs involved.

But of course that is never going to happen. :(
 
theprestige said:
Those are good points, and I had already given them some thought, before I made my previous post. But there's probably no point discussing it if you don't agree with the basic premise. If you believe it's a miscarriage of justice when the justice system follows the rule of law and reaches a reasonable (but actually incorrect) conclusion based on the facts available at the time, then there's no reason for us to debate whether this particular case met that standard.
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How about "whether or not your premise is valid this is an example of a miscarriage of justice"?

Because under the definition that others are using, for instance Mathew Best's
I think if an innocent person is found guilty (let alone dozens of innocent people), then it's reasonable to call that a miscarriage of justice
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It's clearly a miscarriage of justice.

But as SmartCookie showed, under your definition, it's also a miscarriage of justice.

So, at least with regards to this case, it's not necessary to sort out the philosophical issue that you're bringing up in order to answer the question "was this a miscarriage of justice?" the answer, in either case, is "yes."
 
Something various lawyers are picking up on, is the systematic failure by the PO to disclose exculpatory evidence;

https://twitter.com/Barristerblog/status/1385551884463837185

"Amongst many jaw-dropping paragraphs in the Sub-postmasters' appeals is this gem.
Document not to be disclosed "because it might assist the defence."

That is the theme behind the miscarriage of justice, the PO started off their enquiries believing their system was not at fault, but as they realised that it was the system, rather than back down and admit their own error, they covered up and created a false narrative.

There has been a debate here over miscarriages of justice, but there is also evidence that this was a large scale malicious prosecution, whereby the PO continued to prosecute, knowing that the exculpatory evidence indicated their system was at fault.
 
I’ve been following this case for years - in PE, ComputerWeekly and the Radio 4 coverage and it has always been clear that the prosecutors withheld pertinent information time and time again. And not only that actively attempted to bury and prevent reports into its activities coming to light.
 
I've done a fair amount of forensic software evaluation over the years and twice testified as an expert witness. It's so much easier doing that for the defence where all we had to do was demonstrate how easy it was to break stuff or modify data illicitly (God? root? What is the difference?) than to demonstrate how robust something was. One of the reasons why the PO didn't want to allow anybody to go down that path.

The other being that both the PO and their legal team were institutionally corrupt without the slightest regard for justice or the effects of their actions on individuals.


On a lighter note, I have contemporaneous reports from a well-known trial of the time where an ancestor of mine and a couple of his accomplices were found not guilty by a sympathetic jury of a series of charges of which they were guilty and for which they should have ended up on the end of a rope. Almost exactly 200 years ago and justice was never done.

Of course, if it had been I wouldn't be here.
 
Darat said:
I’ve been following this case for years - in PE, ComputerWeekly and the Radio 4 coverage and it has always been clear that the prosecutors withheld pertinent information time and time again. And not only that actively attempted to bury and prevent reports into its activities coming to light.
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Which should (is?) illegal in itself and the buggers should be hauled roughly over the coals for it.
 
It is a classic and sadly common example of how many people (police, prosecutors and in this case, other authorities with investigative powers) who work within the UK CJ system, think. They decide on the preferred narrative at the start of any investigation and then plough on regardless, even when the preferred narrative is falling apart.
 
GlennB said:
Which should (is?) illegal in itself and the buggers should be hauled roughly over the coals for it.
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Hopefully that will happen.

There is a recent example in Scotland, where it has been admitted there was a malicious prosecution of the administrators involved after the collapse of Rangers football club. The problem is that no one has been held responsible and disciplined, instead the Scottish taxpayer is forking out millions in compensation.

In cases like that, compensation is legalised bribery, paying off victims, so those responsible can avoid responsibility.
 
Very interesting blog post, by a lawyer, who is questioning the role of the lawyers in the prosecution;

https://lawyerwatch.wordpress.com/2...e-lawyers-post/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

"There are indications from the Court of lawyers finger prints on some of the other failures to disclose that the Court deals with. Disclosure is declined because it is costly and inconvenient or because something was sensitive and “Could be used as mitigation” (!)."

That relates to advice given by a lawyer, Clarke, to the PO about collating information about issues with the accounting system;

"“At that conference he had advised the creation of a single hub to collate all Horizon-related defects, bugs, complaints, queries and Fujitsu remedies, so there would be a single source of information for disclosure purposes in future prosecutions. POL had accepted his advice and had set up a weekly conference call, three of which had taken place by the time Mr Clarke wrote his later advice."

But what happened was that all such information was either shredded, not recorded or not disclosed. It appears whilst one lawyer was advising and encouraging disclosure, others may have been behind the actions by the PO to hide that exculpatory evidence.
 
Nessie said:
Something various lawyers are picking up on, is the systematic failure by the PO to disclose exculpatory evidence;

https://twitter.com/Barristerblog/status/1385551884463837185

"Amongst many jaw-dropping paragraphs in the Sub-postmasters' appeals is this gem.
Document not to be disclosed "because it might assist the defence."

That is the theme behind the miscarriage of justice, the PO started off their enquiries believing their system was not at fault, but as they realised that it was the system, rather than back down and admit their own error, they covered up and created a false narrative.

There has been a debate here over miscarriages of justice, but there is also evidence that this was a large scale malicious prosecution, whereby the PO continued to prosecute, knowing that the exculpatory evidence indicated their system was at fault.
Click to expand...

Don't you have "discovery" in UK law?
 
smartcooky said:
Then how is it that both Fujitsu and Post Office knowingly failed to disclose, and why aren't they being criminally prosecuted for it?
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I am not sure. I am also not sure how many, if any Post Office cases are from Scotland.

In Scotland there is no specific criminal offence to fail to disclose evidence, instead there is a Lord Advocate's Code of Practice. Since it is regularly the prosecutor who fails to disclose evidence, or ensure that potentially exculpatory evidence is investigated, and the Lord Advocate is head prosecutor, it is unlikely the prosecutor is going to prosecute themselves.

The legal system considers itself to be honourable, whilst repeatedly proving it is not. Like the banking system, which asked for a light regulatory touch because it could be trusted, and then instantly embarked on a series of financial scandals mis-selling products. Another example are MPs, who hate being held to account, but constantly prove that they need strict regulation of their behaviour.

It is legalised corruption, the fantasy whereby we pretend not to be corrupt, by making corrupt practices leagl, or at least not illegal.
 
smartcooky said:
Then how is it that both Fujitsu and Post Office knowingly failed to disclose, and why aren't they being criminally prosecuted for it?
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That’s part of why it is a miscarriage of justice! And why I say it is everyone on the prosecution side needs to be investigated for their part in it.

At the heart of this was a terrible conflict of interest, the investigators were the Royal Mail and the prosecution was Royal Mail they both had an interest in ensuring the blame fell outside the Royal Mail.

Should never be allowed in my opinion - akin to say how the RSPCA investigates and prosecutes.


ETA: In case this seems slightly strange wording or not in your justice system. In the UK (think this is countrywide) we all have the power to bring prosecutions, not just civil actions, so a private individual or company can prosecute you in a standard court and if found guilty you will face the same sentence, including prison time as if the state had been prosecuting you. This can be for pretty much all alleged crimes (“serious” crimes require the approval of the state prosecutors to go ahead or only the state can prosecute - for example crimes such as terrorism).

What happened here is that Royal Mail accused their employees of theft (and similar crimes), Royal Mail staff investigated these alleged crimes, then often the same Royal Mail staff (and contracted legal bods) prosecuted in court. Many of the victims of this didn’t even understand that they would end up in court and often spoke to the investigators never knowing the “investigators” were building a criminal case against them.
 
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Bob001 said:
I still think that before people get sent to prison there should be proof that the system works flawlessly.
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Yesterday I actually considered making the argument that it wouldn't be justice to not do anything unless the system was perfect. I figured that went without saying. I guess it doesn't.
 
Roboramma said:
How about "whether or not your premise is valid this is an example of a miscarriage of justice"?

Because under the definition that others are using, for instance Mathew Best's
It's clearly a miscarriage of justice.

But as SmartCookie showed, under your definition, it's also a miscarriage of justice.

So, at least with regards to this case, it's not necessary to sort out the philosophical issue that you're bringing up in order to answer the question "was this a miscarriage of justice?" the answer, in either case, is "yes."
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smartcookie showed it might be. But again, I don't see the point in debating it if you don't even accept the premise.
 
It is odd that as the Post Office investigated the alleged thefts and found more and more evidence of failures with the Horizon system, that they did not switch to investigating it, using the accused post office workers as witnesses.

The PO could have got millions in compensation from Fujitsu and kept its reputation.
 
theprestige said:
smartcookie showed it might be. But again, I don't see the point in debating it if you don't even accept the premise.
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Well, I think you have a point, depending on what we're actually talking about.

If a miscarriage of justice is meant to be evidence that there's something necessarily wrong with the system, then certainly you're right that "produced a negative outcome" isn't enough to show that.

If on the other hand we're trying to improve the system and as a first step noting it's failures, then it's worth tallying up all the times it fails, whether or not they were avoidable, because we're not yet at the level of analysis that can really determine whether they were avoidable. Having tallied up the failures the next step is to say, "okay, is there anything we can do to lower the number of failures the system makes?". Haven't a more complete list of failures should make that analysis easier to do.

Even if we're just working on a case by case basis, saying "here's a negative outcome! This is bad!" seems like a useful step. Then going back and seeing if there's anything that could have been done to prevent that outcome is probably the next step.

So, do I grant your premise? I think it's really a semantic issue. Most people will probably agree with you that the system shouldn't be changed based on cases where the system itself wasn't at fault. Whether or not those cases should be called miscarriages of justice just doesn't seem like a big deal to me, but I think I'm leaning more toward the side that they should as doing so lets us tally them all up together and we might find that there are so many that even though in individual cases it doesn't seem like there was a problem with the system, so many problem cases indicates that we must be missing something.
 
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