Re: Post Office Horizon system prosecutions
Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2021 10:01 pm
Certain judges should be facing perverting the course of justice charges, imo.
Open to critical enquiry
https://scrutable.science/
That's what I take from the phrasing The effect of the Court of Appeal’s finding, given effect in slightly anachronistic Victorian language - that the Post Office’s conduct “offended the conscience of the court”, is that the appellant should not only not have been convicted, but should not have been prosecuted too. I read that as pointing to misconduct by either the prosecution or the presiding judges. but I'm a layman: anyone more clued-up care to comment?
Prosecution is done by the prosecutors e.g. CPS, HMRC etc, so it isn't a reference to the judiciary.basementer wrote: ↑Sat Jun 05, 2021 2:26 amThat's what I take from the phrasing The effect of the Court of Appeal’s finding, given effect in slightly anachronistic Victorian language - that the Post Office’s conduct “offended the conscience of the court”, is that the appellant should not only not have been convicted, but should not have been prosecuted too. I read that as pointing to misconduct by either the prosecution or the presiding judges. but I'm a layman: anyone more clued-up care to comment?
In other words if the system showed a fictitious surplus, the Post Office transferred the 'sum' to its profits: if it showed a fictitious deficit, then it demanded the postmasters pay it out of their own pocket (which many did) or pursued them in court and hounded them into jail. While the CEO Paula Vennels received a CBE and bonuses for making the Post Office 'profitable'.Any surplus from a balancing error was held in a suspense account operated by the Post Office. If no explanation for the surplus became available (which invariably was the case), the sum was transferred to the Post Office and credited to its profit and loss account and shown under its profits.
Thx disco.discovolante wrote: ↑Sat Jun 05, 2021 9:09 amProsecution is done by the prosecutors e.g. CPS, HMRC etc, so it isn't a reference to the judiciary.basementer wrote: ↑Sat Jun 05, 2021 2:26 amThat's what I take from the phrasing The effect of the Court of Appeal’s finding, given effect in slightly anachronistic Victorian language - that the Post Office’s conduct “offended the conscience of the court”, is that the appellant should not only not have been convicted, but should not have been prosecuted too. I read that as pointing to misconduct by either the prosecution or the presiding judges. but I'm a layman: anyone more clued-up care to comment?
The Marshall lecture says that the PO was the prosecutor because of its status as governmental in nature?discovolante wrote: ↑Sat Jun 05, 2021 9:09 amProsecution is done by the prosecutors e.g. CPS, HMRC etc, so it isn't a reference to the judiciary.basementer wrote: ↑Sat Jun 05, 2021 2:26 amThat's what I take from the phrasing The effect of the Court of Appeal’s finding, given effect in slightly anachronistic Victorian language - that the Post Office’s conduct “offended the conscience of the court”, is that the appellant should not only not have been convicted, but should not have been prosecuted too. I read that as pointing to misconduct by either the prosecution or the presiding judges. but I'm a layman: anyone more clued-up care to comment?
Yes I agree. I think it goes beyond that though into people who aren't necessarily 'like them' but are part of institutions. A bit of an outdated but classic example is Lord Denning's comments when dismissing the Birmingham Six's claims against the police:
That's a fairly extreme and as I say, old example, and I really wouldnt want to tar everyone in the judiciary with the same brush, but I do wonder (again without having read all the recent stuff in depth, sorry) whether there are echoes of this in the Post Office case, a kind of reticence to contemplate that an entire system may be faulty or corrupt because of the potential consequences if it was.Just consider the course of events if their action were to proceed to trial… If the six men failed it would mean that much time and money and worry would have been expended by many people to no good purpose. If they won, it would mean that the police were guilty of perjury; that they were guilty of violence and threats; that the confessions were involuntary and improperly admitted in evidence; and that the convictions were erroneous… That was such an appalling vista that every sensible person would say, ‘It cannot be right that these actions should go any further’.
For precisely this reason I don't understand why people think that state organisations will treat them more fairly than private organisations. Private organisations do terrible things from time to time, but I don't see that publicly owned organisations are any better, and this PO case is just a case in point. In a private organisation you are more legally exposed if your wrong-doing is located. I always remember talking to the private company that took over Rosyth Dockyard from the Navy. They said to me, well the first thing we had to do was become compliant with health and safety legisation, whose details the Royal Navy got away with ignoring.discovolante wrote: ↑Sat Jun 05, 2021 12:53 pmI think there is unfortunately also a general bias towards thinking that institutions and those who represent them are behaving properly unless shown otherwise. I'm not sure it's always deliberate but it can be quite a difficult hurdle to overcome.
Just stop there.noggins wrote: ↑Mon Jun 07, 2021 12:24 pmIn this case I think the background bias in favour of the establishments beneficience is less significant than the utter incomprehension of the foibles of computer software.
Also: what is a judge supposed to do if the prosecution base their case on some piece of utter nonsense, but the incompetent defence dont pick up on it. Do they have to trust the jury will see it too?
That is part of the problem. The change in PACE meant that the defence had to prove the software was producing errors. The defence could not do this as the Post Office, the prosecutor in these cases, would not hand over details of these errors. They knew about these problems for many years but refused to acknowledge this and kept on prosecuting people. Many senior heads should roll over this but I think, as usual, this will not happen,noggins wrote: ↑Mon Jun 07, 2021 1:16 pmYes you are quite right.
(i was wondering generally what power -no, duty -a judge has to squish a prosecution's arguements when very wrong).
What could a defence have done? Got into a slanging match with and risked a contempt charge in the hope the jury were bolshy and brave?
cvb wrote: ↑Tue Jun 08, 2021 9:49 amThat is part of the problem. The change in PACE meant that the defence had to prove the software was producing errors. The defence could not do this as the Post Office, the prosecutor in these cases, would not hand over details of these errors. They knew about these problems for many years but refused to acknowledge this and kept on prosecuting people. Many senior heads should roll over this but I think, as usual, this will not happen,noggins wrote: ↑Mon Jun 07, 2021 1:16 pmYes you are quite right.
(i was wondering generally what power -no, duty -a judge has to squish a prosecution's arguements when very wrong).
What could a defence have done? Got into a slanging match with and risked a contempt charge in the hope the jury were bolshy and brave?
Fabricating evidence counts as perverting the course of justice. Can it be argued that presenting computer evidence known to be dodgy is fabricated evidence?
I thought that was the case. I'd argue this was criminal.
And it seems fairly clear that the behaviour would come under the required definition of misconduct, too (my bold).It is extremely difficult to extract from the cases any general identifying features of public officers in a contemporary context. A person may fall within the meaning of a ‘public officer’ where one or more of the following characteristics applies to a role or function that they exercise with respect to the public at large:
Judicial or quasi-judicial
Regulatory
Punitive
Coercive
Investigative
Representative (of the public at large)
Responsibility for public funds
This list is not exhaustive and cannot be determinative of whether a person is properly described as a public officer, when acting in a particular capacity. The characteristics should be treated only as a guide and considered in the context of all the facts and circumstances of the particular case.
Examples of behaviour that have in the past fallen within the offence include:
wilful excesses of official authority;
'malicious' exercises of official authority;
wilful neglect of a public duty;
intentional infliction of bodily harm, imprisonment, or other injury upon a person;
frauds and deceits.
Thanks, that was interesting.basementer wrote: ↑Sat Jul 10, 2021 11:52 pmA discussion of the underlying faults in the software has just appeared on Computerphile's YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBJm9ZYqL10
Lord Justice Holroyde and two other judges quashed the convictions of Robert Ambrose, Hasmukh Shingadia, John Armstrong, Timothy Brentnall, Jerry Hosi, Gurdeep Singh Dhale, John Dickson, Abiodun Omotoso, Malcolm Watkins, Sami Sabet, Carina Price and Rizwan Manjra.
Their appeals were unopposed by the Post Office and the judge said the court would give full reasons in writing at a later date, but that they should be cleared as soon as possible in the circumstances.
The inquiry is expected to run for the rest of this year and will address why sub-postmasters were singled out and whether they have been justly compensated.
Crucially, it will ask whether those at software developer Fujitsu, the Post Office itself or even their biggest shareholder, the government, knew about faults in the system while using that data in court to convict sub-postmasters.
Just in passing: The name "Fujitsu" might suggest that it was Evil Forrins Wot Dunnit, but Fujitsu UK is still very much the old ICL, which Fujitsu bought at least in part for its extensive government contracts (ICL having been the "UK IBM" in the 1970s).Fishnut wrote: ↑Sun Feb 13, 2022 5:12 pmThe inquiry is expected to run for the rest of this year and will address why sub-postmasters were singled out and whether they have been justly compensated.
Crucially, it will ask whether those at software developer Fujitsu, the Post Office itself or even their biggest shareholder, the government, knew about faults in the system while using that data in court to convict sub-postmasters.
IABMCTT. There are all kinds of transactions in a Post Office that aren't amenable to physical stocktaking. For example, if you send a parcel that costs £4.50 in postage, a machine prints out a frank, rather than someone having to lick 9 50p stamps. In other words, the accounting system needs to be able to audit itself, which is quite a software challenge.