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Largest ever miscarriage of justice?

Garrison

Philosopher
Garrison
Joined
Sep 10, 2011
Messages
6,987
Location
UK
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?
Click to expand...

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".
Click to expand...

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!
Click to expand...

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!
Click to expand...

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.
Click to expand...

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.
Click to expand...

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".
Click to expand...

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.
Click to expand...

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?
Click to expand...

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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