To be absolutely aghast after watching Mr Bates v the Post Office

[Vistada]

I binged all of this in one go, no spoilers (although the current state of play is easily findable...)

AIBU to be absolutely aghast that this happened, and happened for so long.
Absolutely dystopian!

I listened to a really good BBC podcast which covered much of the same ground a few years ago.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/m000jf7j

Yes it's a scandal. Yes the Post Office behaved appallingly, but Fujitsu should be taking more of a kicking than they are.

Already calls for the computer company to pay out ( well, on lbc anyway )
I bet they don't :(

Especially as Fujitsu are bidding for more UK government contracts at the moment.
Will be interesting to see how that pans out in light of the post office fiasco.

Thats what puzzles me the most too.

The only reason I can think of as to why they DIDN'T do this is that they were corrupted by Fujitsu.

The stupid thing is that, in their desperation to prove their scheme does indeed work, these managers end up looking even more ridiculous by being utterly determined not to accept reality.
i see it all the time, senior manager A implements Big Idea everyone said would fail. BI is clearly a total failure. A refuses to reinstate original way of working. 1 year later everyone has lost all respect for them and they are shuffled off to some back office somewhere they can't wreck anything important

Victoria Derbyshire@vicderbyshire
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52s#Newsnight live with subpostmasters reacting to today’s gov announcement about exonerating those with convictions

@BBCTwo @BBCNews

#Newsnight
#PostOfficeScandal

I think it is quite telling that the PO offered plea deals to to the SPMs they were accusing, agreeing to drop the theft claim if they pled guilty to the false accounting claim. If you bring a theft claim to court, you have to show that they accused has 1. stolen something and 2. permanently deprived the victim of that something. In cases where ridiculous amounts of money were being claimed from tiny post offices - the sorts of money that would never have come through the tills (because this was cash transactions they were talking about - selling bloody stamps) - there is no way the PO would have been able to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the "the something" could possibly have existed, let alone proven it was stolen by the SPMs.

There's a Panorama documentary on BBC1 right now. Absolutely heartbreaking stories. Including the poor woman who was pregnant at her trial and who was imprisoned.

The documents being shown by the journalists to these victims - internal memos etc from the PO - are utterly shocking. These fuckers really need to be brought to a criminal court.

The Panorama programme on yesterday.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/l0056hkz/post-office-victims-speak-to-the-bbc

I’ve posted this on the other thread as well.

Sky News were saying it’s really the Fujitsu Post Office Scandal I.e. name them both.

How many of these poor people actually went to jail?

And also, how can the post office prosecute people and send them to jail!? They’re the post office, not the police!

Fujitsu appeared to be falsifying accounts. Not only scrubbing records of visits to their office but changing data as hoc on the system and in one case almost as a vendetta. Is that true? If so then it's not just the PO.

The Post Office didn't send people to jail! That's where proceedings went before the court.

They had, however, powers to prosecute directly eg leading to postmasters having to repay sums of money, being bankrupted or losing their businesses.

It's absolutely appalling. What's even worse is how little public awareness there was, even while the inquiry was being held. I'm in Ireland, and came across it a number of years ago via a Twitter / X account from one of the postmasters advocating for the matter at the time. I followed up on the links, and the Times were covering it at the time, and I couldn't believe it was real.

Exactly. And that this never showed up in the normal auditing process (before this ultimately was all disclosed).

Yes I can't understand why they are not equally culpable? Paula Vennells has been (rightly) brought to account but why not bigwigs at Fujitsu?

A balance in a suspense account at year end should have been questioned by any halfway competent auditor, but with the PO being a very large institution I don't know how they'd go about spotting that or if it was even one very large account or lots of them.

This is another awful thing to come out of this. I am no legal expert by any stretch, but the evidence that sent people to prison was so flimsy and basically amounted to "computer says so". No sudden increase in wealth, holidays, cars etc. How low was the burden of proof? WTF were these judges doing not dismissing these cases out of hand?

Fujitsu and PO have many serious questions to answer, but so do the judiciary.

While I accept that judges direct juries, and will sometimes instruct them to return a not guilty verdict if the evidence is insufficient, I’m also kind of astounded that so many juries convicted too.

@KingsleyBorder this won't be popular here, but I'm not certain I like trial by jury. The idea that a small group of randomly selected people should decide someones fate, especially in cases involving IT, accountancy, science etc. doesn't sit well with me. They don't have the knowledge to make such a big call. If you're in the dock you'd hope you'd get a jury of above average intelligence, but unfortunately the general population is a mixed bag at best. Someone once said to me, picture a person of average intelligence. 50% of people will be less intelligent than that.

Lots of people aren't that well educated. Juries are just ordinary people selected at random for people without convictions and that are over 18 and under 75. Plus lots of people believe authorities like the Post Office must be telling the truth because of their reputation. They are blinded by computer talk, financial stuff. Just think how many people don't "do maths"
also none of the jurors knew about all the people being prosecuted. They just see the case in isolation.

personally I think it's time that, for anything more compelx than "he punched me in the nose m'lud" there should be professional jurors. Our system is broken and does not deliver justice. Most jurors are not educated or knowledgable enough to try sexual offences. There's a reason experienced criminals always elect trial by jury on either way offences - much more likely to get off. In my opinion crown court cases should be tried by 3 suitably qualified judges, in a rung up from the current magistrates system.

I take on board all you say above. But one of the things that juries are supposed to do is take a view as to the credibility of witnesses. It’s interesting that none of the SPMs came across convincingly enough when they insisted that they had not stolen anything and the system was faulty. (Though a defendant is not obliged to give evidence on their own behalf and often exercises the right not to testify and be cross examined, maybe that happened a lot. Still if I knew I was not guilty I reckon I’d take my chances and take the stand.)

It’s also all very well people being outraged now, but we know that an awful lot of the general public were very quick to jump on the bandwagon of vilifying them, bullying their kids etc at the time. One guy said he was hounded for “destroying the village”. And no, I don’t think that “well, they were convicted” is an excuse. If someone is convicted you let the law punish them, and you keep your mouth shut and most definitely don’t abuse their family. Despicable.

@KingsleyBorder I agree with you on the abuse. Even if a person is guilty, they'll pay their price to society, then the slate is clean. Some heinous offences aside.

I see what you're saying re: defense but it really shouldn't have been up to them, the principle is "beyond reasonable doubt", and I just can't see how any juror and certainly accomplished legal minds of a judge could see that the evidence in the cases ever met that kind of threshold.

While I accept that judges direct juries, and will sometimes instruct them to return a not guilty verdict if the evidence is insufficient, I’m also kind of astounded that so many juries convicted too

And in the Seema Mistra case, the judge more or less directed the jury not to convict (he said there wasn't enough evidence), they convicted anyway, and then he sent her to jail! If he had doubts about her guilt, he should have imposed a light sentence (I think she was one of the ones who was pregnant at the time, too).

I haven't agreed with the jury system for years. Time to get rid.

Although the so-called intelligent, well trained judges haven't covered themselves with glory either, with the massive exception of Judge Fraser.

On the "computer says no" evidence, this is actually a thing.

There is a presumption in criminal law that if the computer says something, it must be true.

Funnily enough, this was something the Post Office (and no doubt others) lobbied for in the late 90s.

It's likely that it has led to many miscarriages of justice, way beyond the Post Office cases.