Paula Vennells is history but now at the Post Office Inquiry is Fujitsu distinguished engineer Gareth Jenkins - thread 4

[nauticant]

A continuation of this thread:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5094266-paula-vennells-was-done-the-other-week-the-post-office-inquiry-is-now-questioning-associates-and-others-thread-3

When the hearings are going on, live-streaming can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/@postofficehorizonitinquiry947/featured

All of the previous hearings can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/@postofficehorizonitinquiry947/videos

I think it was 10 minutes.

Back now

Now!

"I'd not considered it that way" repeated ad nauseum is not a sufficient response! Good grief.

Beer finally managed to wring out of GJ acceptance that he'd been asked twice, once by "the lawyer's route" and once by "the investigator's route", about problems in Horizon. This obtuseness is doing him no favours at all, especially since, when backed into a corner where he has to answer, he'll often say he doesn't recall.

Did he understand anything that was said to him?

Seemingly not.

I think it's becoming apparent that he understood very well. He was wanting to cover his back at all times.

Jason Beer is totally eviscerating him and revealing that, beneath the bumbling, unworldly techie veneer there lurks something not very nice at all.

He can get in line with the rest of them! I can't get over that that they are sitting there facing their victims with not a shred of (genuine) remorse between them. How cold can they be?

One thing that strikes me in all of this is the informality around requests for expert witness statements.

I was really surprised that there was no requirement for him to sign to say that he had read and understood the legal requirements of making a statement on each statement/question answer rather than relying on him remembering an e-mail from some months/years ago.

I think there should also be a statement attached to witness statements on the level of independence from the parties involved in the court proceedings. Many lay people and jurors would assume that "expert witnesses" are independent. But this was obviously not the case and GJ is obviously a biased witness having worked on Horizon for decades.

That requests to give witness statements should come from a designated lawyer on each team in a proper format. It appears that there was a scattergun approach with emails from numerous sources asking questions and requesting statements. I'm unsure that if I received a brief e-mail at work with a question asking me to clarify something that had happened at work that I would automatically regard it as giving a witness statement. The fact that the PO legal team then cut and pasted fairly informal e-mail replies into the evidence seems wrong.

I find Fujitsu's corporate role very odd here - they seemed happy for this guy to dangle without any management input. The whole evidence gathering process seems to have been done on the fly and yet this was potentially a very serious corporate issue

1. GJ said earlier that he got no time allowance for having to review the data on these cases - it was fitted around his regular work - why didn't Fujitsu have a dedicated team?
2. Some of the requests from the PO legal team seemed ridiculous - like a sudden request from PO lawyers for GJ to review several years worth of data for a court hearing one week later
3. What were the Fujitsu legal team doing?

My take is that GJ was busy, and also kept on getting this out of scope and alien work foisted on him, and in the absence of useful guidance, interpreted the work narrowly and in a way that would suit him. He might even have convinced himself that such interpretations were valid.

Now he's been shown that these self-serving interpretations were invalid, and he has two choices, own up, or try to justify them. He ought to be doing the former, and I wouldn't be surprised if he's been advised to do that by his legal counsel, but he's foolishly doing the latter.

Who would/should have been giving him the guidance though? I'm assuming he's fairly high up so wouldn't/shouldn't have needed too much hand holding? He doesn't seem to have asked for too much help.

I think his attitude to the whole thing as it was happening can be summed up by the word 'shrug'.

He should have been working hand-in-hand with Fujitsu legal counsel. I'd expect they were too busy to do this but also GJ was operating, partially, in the criminal domain while they'll have been civil. So they could have appointed external counsel having experience of criminal matters. But that wouldn't be cheap and also would have been a pain in the arse to set up.

It's the same theme that we've seen even more on the Post Office side: a bunch of amateurs working somewhat cluelessly at things they didn't understand, and doing it as cheaply as possible.

I don't think he was particularly high up. He did not have any management role. I think he was the techie who was the "go to guy" on Horizon because he'd been there so long.

That's my impression too.

If we're to take what he's saying as true, he certainly seemed to have absolutely no curiosity outside of dealing with a particular problem at hand in isolation, making no attempt to see any sort of bigger picture. But I'm not sure I believe that.

The lawyers are supposed to satisfy themselves that any expert has been properly instructed. Of course, most of the time they will be dealing with experts who give evidence all the time and fully understand the requirements. But, when it is someone who hasn't done it before, they need to get it right. In this instance it appears that some of the lawyers deliberately misled Jenkins as to the requirements. However, it is now clear that he was alerted to the requirements, so his failure is inexcusable.

When writing a report, an expert witness should include a statement to the effect that they have complied with their duty to the court to provide independent assistance by way of objective and unbiased opinion and an acknowledgment that they will inform all parties and, where appropriate, the court in the event that their opinion changes on any material issue. It appears that GJ's reports did not include such a statement and no-one (judges or defence lawyers) picked up on the significance of this.

Oh, that's bad. Post Office were doing Seema Misra for theft over a two and a half year period but only carried out analysis of transactions over a 13 month period. I wonder if that was kept from defence counsel?

Beer is laying out here the sheer unfairness of the way Post Office ran their case against Seema Misra. She put up a decent fight but didn't stand a chance. But it is surprising that the court were not more active in trying to control proceedings so they were more fair.

The section of Seema Misra having a string of call logs about missing money seemingly going on forever is heartbreaking. It must have been driving her to despair, and that's before Post Office decided to ruin her.

That poor woman must have been tearing her hair out trying to deal with the help desk 😔

I'm my very limited understanding of criminal law, the burden of proof is for the criminal prosecution team to prove someone is guilty, rather than the defence team to prove their client is not guilty.

For example, if I am arrested and charged with theft, it is up to the Crown Prosecution team to prove I am guilty. Its not for me to prove I am innocent.

So, if im understanding this correctly, Jason Beer line of questioning here is showing the Post Office and Gareth Jenkins moved that burden of proof from themselves,overto the defendant, which goes against how our justice system works in the UK?

Yes, I was thinking that it must be traumatic for her to be hearing all this and 'reliving' it.