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Post Office lawyers held secret meeting with judge to stop disclosure

188 points by chrisjj 2y ago

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
Holy cow. The more I read about this disaster, the worse it gets. I really hope that folks get what's coming, but the UK has a double set of laws, one for the Peers, and one for the Poors. I suspect that the guilty includes a lot of "Peers."
- bradybunch 2y ago
  Yeah wtf! Isn't a basic tenet of a fair trial to have disclosure of exculpatory evidence and that there should be no private meetings without defence present?
- calpaterson 2y ago
  It is not correct to ascribe the blame for this issue on a social divide between the public and the establishment/aristocrats/elites/etc. Many of those culpable are pretty ordinary solicitors and technology contractors and not, eg, peers of the realm.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
    If/when the accountability starts to become inevitable, that gives them lots of bus-fodder, then. One thing that I have learned (and, no one else seems to have learned), is that Accountability begins and ends at the top. It doesn't matter if it was a "rogue employee." The top head is Responsible. That's (ostensibly) why they get paid the big bucks (or so I'm told, but never shown).
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - h0h0h0h0111 2y ago
      So are you suggesting that every time an employee commits a crime, CEOs should go to jail alongside them? Every time a politician commits an offence the president/prime minister should go to prison? Every time a pupil breaks the law, the principal of the school should go to prison? I'd suggest the reason 'no on else seems to have learned' it is because it's a ridiculous and impractical idea. Should CEOs (etc) be punished if they knowingly aid and abet crime and/or cover it up? Sure, I think most people are on board with that.
      - ClumsyPilot 2y ago
        Executives are not punished even when they knowingly and purposefully perpetuate a crime, just see Boeing.
      - YawningAngel 2y ago
        That's exactly how this works in regulated industries. At UK banks there is criminal liability for senior management for institutional failures. Concretely in this case, if you are bringing a prosecution and you fail to uphold the rights of the defendant, yes I absolutely think you should face criminal liability for that.
      - ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
        > So are you suggesting that every time an employee commits a crime, CEOs should go to jail alongside them? Pretty much, yeah. Happens in the military (not always, of course, but more common). The argument I always hear, justifying the enormous pay differential, between the CEO and their staff, is that the CEO is ultimately responsible for everything. In practice, this almost is never the case.
        robertlagrant 2y ago
        The main reason for CEO pay is that's what it costs to hire a CEO.
        disgruntledphd2 2y ago
  - georgesimon 2y ago
    Indeed, and from the other side, there may not have been any progress at all without the support of Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom.
  - n4r9 2y ago
    Arguably this is (yet another) failure of the outsourcing of public services to the lowest bidder.
  - ClumsyPilot 2y ago
    > Many of those culpable are pretty ordinary You misattribute The whole point of this coverup was to benefit the elites or cover up their failings. We have a dodgy contract, acceptance of a faulty system, and desire to cover up its failings because that would lead to ruined careers at the C level. Misallocation of funds would be investigated, we would have to figure out where did millions of dollars actually disappear to, etc. The middle classes involved, solicitors, etc. are culpable in the sense that they serviced the machine and enabled it, but they not the beneficiaries, they are just cog in the machine. If a specific person would refuse, another would soon take his place. So the real blame lies with those who were comfortable giving outright criminal orders.
- piltdownman 2y ago
  If you have a chance, the sedately paced but brutal TV adaptation of the scandal is well worth the watch. What they did to a demographic of genial middle-aged village shop proprietors to cover up their own administrative and regulatory failings was nothing short of stochastic terrorism. https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20240112-post-office-scandal-how-a-tv-drama-shook-up-britain-in-just-a-week https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20240112-post-office-sca...
  - cmiller1 2y ago
    How exactly is this stochastic terrorism?
  - calpaterson 2y ago
    There is also a podcast. It's more in-depth than the tv series and has been updated over the years. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/series/m000jf7j https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/series/m000jf7j
    - dwighttk 2y ago
      Thanks for the rec
- cesaref 2y ago
  It's not about peers and poor, it's about immigrants, and racism within the post office - the abhorrent assumption that immigrant families who get contracts as sub postmasters were 'on the make'. It was reported in the lords that >40% of those prosecuted were immigrants, with a high proportion of asian women, which, given the very low level of asian women in the prison population is hard to believe. For reference, hansard has what was discussed in the lords: https://hansard.parliament.uk/lords/2024-02-19/debates/E6D46CF3-EAB7-489E-ADA8-17F64CF3528F/PostOfficeHorizonScandalRacism https://hansard.parliament.uk/lords/2024-02-19/debates/E6D46...
barrkel 2y ago
This seems like perversion of the legal process. It's the kind of thing that gets custodial sentences when normal people do it. Looking at https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/offences/crown-court/item/perverting-the-course-of-justice/ https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/offences/crown-court/it... it seems like A1 for culpability / harm, 2-7 years prison.
- intunderflow 2y ago
  There will be zero consequences from this report though, so it doesn't matter what could theoretically happen.
rlpb 2y ago
> ‘I was simply not aware of the duties on a prosecutor to make sure an expert witness was fully aware of their duties.’ We cannot have a system where people can be wrongly convicted while being denied a proper defence due to incompetence. Either incompetence cannot be a defence, or convictions must not be permitted to be made where incompetence might lead to an injustice. Or another way of looking at this: "the prosecution's case would fail if anybody involved on the prosecution's side turns out to be incompetent" should be an absolute defence in any trial and if that situation arises then it must always fail to result in a conviction.
- RobotToaster 2y ago
  If "ignorance of law excuses no one" is true, you would think it would be doubly so for a prosecutor.
- cogman10 2y ago
  Thankfully, this sort of action would get you a mistrial in the US. The prosecutors must disclose any exculpatory material to the defense. Heck even a secret meeting with the judge, while it might not result in mistrial, is highly unusual in the US and could be brought up on appeal. There are basically no circumstances where a judge should meet with representation of just one side. Especially when that side is the government.
  - rahimnathwani 2y ago
    There was a recent case in the US where: 1. The judge had a secret meeting with the prosecution. 2. The defence attorney found out about it, and challenged the judge about it. 3. The judge demanded to know how the defence attorney found out. 4. When the defence attorney refused to say, the judge ordered the attorney to be jailed for contempt of court. https://www.billboard.com/pro/young-thug-trial-judge-denies-motion-step-down-secret-meeting/ https://www.billboard.com/pro/young-thug-trial-judge-denies-...
    - thereddaikon 2y ago
      Yes and its a big story in the news and everyone knows about it. The Judge is clearly corrupt and the state supreme court have already weighed in. It's pretty clearly an extraordinary situation.
ClumsyPilot 2y ago
Many, like myself, move from a developing country to a developed country not to get a better job / more money, but instead we spend a great deal of money to get away from lawlessness. It is precisely to get away from shenanigans like this. Now i am starting to think all the great efforts were in vain
- exe34 2y ago
  I think it's going downhill fast. I remember being 12 and watching bbc world news, every few months, after a scandal, you'd have a minister/high ranking official apologise and resign. it was completely different from the unapologetic cnuts at the head of my birth country at the time. now we have people like Dominic Cummings who basically broke his own rules and insisted it was fine for him to keep going until he was really forced out, and of course many more of these similar cases - some even lost to a salad.
- mbivert 2y ago
  The grass is always greener; we have a Bengali friend whose innocence regarding how things work in the West makes us smile.
- xoa 2y ago
  >Now i am starting to think all the great efforts were in vain This doesn't make any sense. The difference here vs a lawless dictatorial country isn't that humans are magically all perfect angels in developed countries, but what you're seeing here: investigation by society and people caring, able to talk about it, able to research, able to muster political will around it, able to change all of government in response. This sort of case of massive abuse and criminality by very powerful figures should be rare, but when it does happen there are still fallbacks. There is still a free press that can dig into it and report on it and apply pressure doggedly for years. There are separations of powers that make it more challenging for any one entity to suppress everything. In the UK they did a full TV miniseries around this, lots of articles in major papers, there is an ongoing podcast, vs sending the first journalist to ask questions to prison. There are still regular changes of government at the vote of the population, and in turn incentive for different groups of politicians and new generations of them to gain power by digging into malfeasance of existing ones. There can still be public inquiries long after the fact. The entire point of all the various checks and balances and defense is precisely to try to, eventually, steer things back onto the right track when, not if, they start to veer off. Humans are humans the world over. The slower, louder, argumentative processes of democracy and law are our so far best effort to try to corral that reality. Of course it would be better if such things just never happened at all, but getting from A to B has always been the challenge. Noisy popping of pus is gross but much better then letting it fester under the surface forever.
ExoticPearTree 2y ago
So far, to my knowledge, none of the people that botched this spent a day in jail. So what good are these inquiries that span years until they fade out of public interest, maybe some people get a slap on the wrist and they move on with their lives like nothing happened while others had their lives ruined beyond repair?
- ktallett 2y ago
  Botched is being kind. Lied, cheated, and covered up to destroy people's lives when they knew at the least these people were working with a faulty system, at the most they knew these post masters were completely innocent.
- whycome 2y ago
  Gasp but the head had to give up her Order of the British Empire designation!
  - petesergeant 2y ago
    And also missed out on a suggested Bishophood (this actually happened)
- krisoft 2y ago
  > what good are these inquiries that span years until they fade out of public interest That appears to be the purpose of these inquiries. They very slowly and methodically move forward until the public are either forgetting about the issue or "let bygones be bygones". Until then anyone who should be held accountable (criminally or politically) can answer that they cannot comment on the matter while the inquiries are ongoing. (which is in itself a way to ice the discussion while making it appear as if the person asking the question is out of order, and not the person not answering them) It is a delaying tactic by powerful people against less powerful in the society. Change my mind if you can.
  - petesergeant 2y ago
    > That appears to be the purpose of these inquiries Strong disagree. I’d say these drip drip disclosures are swaying public opinion and we’ll end up in a position where the public are clamouring for blood.
unfocused 2y ago
Private meetings are fine. No issue there. The judge however, erred. He should've never allowed the disclosure to not be disclosed. You can redact information that is harmful to the state, or is not relevant to the case, but in this case, the fact that the system that was being used as the basis of detection of fraud, was in itself being audited, should've meant that it was to be included and disclosed to defense. In my non-lawyer opinion, the judge is the one that erred, and it is compounded that this matter came up in a private meeting without defense, thereby supporting the idea that private meetings should never be had, when there are always exceptions for them. So yes, this looks really bad all around.
- cogman10 2y ago
  Perhaps in the UK, but in the US a private meeting is not fine. The term is ex parte and in most states if it isn't outright banned it's highly discouraged. Pretty much the only time it's allowed is when there's classified information in the mix, and for that there's a huge process beforehand to make sure the defense has access to enough information to make their defense.
  - rahimnathwani 2y ago
    It doesn't seem like there was a 'huge process beforehand' in the case I mentioned: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40810045 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40810045 And I'm pretty sure there was no 'classified information in the mix'.
    - cogman10 2y ago
      Yeah, that's a corrupt judge that's going to be reversed on appeal. The part that sucks is there likely won't be any other consequence for the judge over this bs behavior. He should be impeached and removed.
- mjcl 2y ago
  This article presents a very odd version of what happened. Simon Clarke was the lawyer that actually stopped the Post Office prosecutions as soon as he got involved. In this case he went to the judge and said he was aware of the existence of a report that needed to be disclosed, but it could not be given to anyone (including Simon Clarke) until the report had been presented to parliament. The judge granted the exemption for 8 weeks, after which the report was provided to the defense.
pjc50 2y ago
> "public interest immunity" This is a dead giveaway that someone is setting up a miscarriage of justice to protect someone in power. They were a crucial part of the Matrix-Churchill fiasco, for example. https://www.theguardian.com/world/defence-and-security-blog/2012/nov/09/arms-iraq-saddam-hussein https://www.theguardian.com/world/defence-and-security-blog/... https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/the-cover-up-a-hope-the-scott-report-will-usher-in-changes-to-the-disclosure-laws-/20225.article https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/the-cover-up-a-hope-the-sc...
gwd 2y ago
> Smith suggested that an investigation report from the time should not be disclosed to [Noel Thomas] when it was reviewed in 2014. If it was to be disclosed, the inquiry heard, it should be heavily redacted – and Smith himself had written that Thomas should not be shown a Post Office note from 2005 which noted that operator Fujitsu was testing the reliability of Horizon. > ‘Such a [note] may well invite a request for disclosure of the test results,’ Smith had emailed a colleague. ‘There may also be a risk that [Thomas] will suggest the investigation was inadequate or incomplete.’ Yeah, no shit. You know, in my company we have yearly "compliance training" courses where we have to hear imaginary stories about employees who gave gifts to potential clients, illegally agreed to divide up the market with competitors, and so on. I feel like everyone in the prosecutor's office should be forced to read a certain number of cases of innocent people who were wrongly convicted every year, including all the quotes like this.
belter 2y ago
For the UK legal system the meme needs to be : Attribute to malice what most would consider just incompetence....
- dboreham 2y ago
  Quick note that there isn't a UK legal system. Article relates to England and Wales.
DarkmSparks 2y ago
Tip of the iceberg imho, I would say this is fairly standard practice in UK law now for everything from police notebooks to dna evidence. UK legal system stopped being about law and became all about trying to stem the collapse of trust in it a very long time ago. Now imho there is nothing to trust, every decision some corrupt kafka like show of idiocy. To see how corrupt they are you only need to look at Rishi soon sacked taking pride in a promise to leave the EHCR if they dont let him deprive a few people of basic human rights in order to demonstrate he is tough on immigration - all while his government gives every illegal immigrant free hotel accomodation and a huge weekly allowance higher to make them come in the first place. The only thing we are seeing here is yet another public glimpse into why no one I know still in the UK, rich or poor, has any faith in its institutions any more.
- LocutusOfBorges 2y ago
  > all while his government gives every illegal immigrant free hotel accomodation and a huge weekly allowance higher to make them come in the first place. People seeking asylum in the UK receive £49.18 per week[1], and get thrown into monstrously low quality accommodation - the current government essentially throws them into prison barges[2]. You really should read something other than tabloids. The reality of the situation is nothing like what you’ve described. [1] https://www.gov.uk/asylum-support/what-youll-get https://www.gov.uk/asylum-support/what-youll-get [2] https://theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/may/14/people-on-bibby-stockholm-treated-like-cattle-former-workers-say https://theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/may/14/people-o...
  - DarkmSparks 2y ago
    You seem to miss they are coming from countries where the average salary for a 70 hour working week is £50 a month while they lived in a corrugated steal house with no electricity, (mostly because the American proxies blew up their actual houses) meanwhile, after 6 months of failing to find a job english families are being thrown onto the streets by the 10s of thousands to live in sleeping bags and eat from food banks. 1 in 52 people in London is homeless - the belief is none of them are immigrants. In that world routinely keeping key evidence from the defence, and far worse, is 100% to be expected.
intunderflow 2y ago
The UK legal system (in all its nations) is very much a broken and unfair one where power alone decides your guilt through abuse of procedure. Just look at their private prosecution system, the government pays the bills of the private prosecutor but not the defense so you can just run the trial until your opponent is bankrupt.
ActionHank 2y ago
People's lives were ruined over this. People committed suicide over this. Those complicit in ruining their lives to cover the blunder of the post office, execs, and third party companies should see jail time. The careers and paychecks of the wealthy and powerful do not trump justice and lives lost.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
fmajid 2y ago
The Post Office’s culpability is manifest, but this is first and foremost a massive miscarriage of justice that discredits the British judiciary and its chumminess with fellow Establishment members.
alberto6996 2y ago
[dead]

188 points by chrisjj 2y ago

Holy cow. The more I read about this disaster, the worse it gets. I really hope that folks get what's coming, but the UK has a double set of laws, one for the Peers, and one for the Poors. I suspect that the guilty includes a lot of "Peers."

bradybunch 2y ago
Yeah wtf! Isn't a basic tenet of a fair trial to have disclosure of exculpatory evidence and that there should be no private meetings without defence present?
calpaterson 2y ago
It is not correct to ascribe the blame for this issue on a social divide between the public and the establishment/aristocrats/elites/etc. Many of those culpable are pretty ordinary solicitors and technology contractors and not, eg, peers of the realm.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  If/when the accountability starts to become inevitable, that gives them lots of bus-fodder, then. One thing that I have learned (and, no one else seems to have learned), is that Accountability begins and ends at the top. It doesn't matter if it was a "rogue employee." The top head is Responsible. That's (ostensibly) why they get paid the big bucks (or so I'm told, but never shown).
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - h0h0h0h0111 2y ago
    So are you suggesting that every time an employee commits a crime, CEOs should go to jail alongside them? Every time a politician commits an offence the president/prime minister should go to prison? Every time a pupil breaks the law, the principal of the school should go to prison? I'd suggest the reason 'no on else seems to have learned' it is because it's a ridiculous and impractical idea. Should CEOs (etc) be punished if they knowingly aid and abet crime and/or cover it up? Sure, I think most people are on board with that.
    - ClumsyPilot 2y ago
      Executives are not punished even when they knowingly and purposefully perpetuate a crime, just see Boeing.
    - YawningAngel 2y ago
      That's exactly how this works in regulated industries. At UK banks there is criminal liability for senior management for institutional failures. Concretely in this case, if you are bringing a prosecution and you fail to uphold the rights of the defendant, yes I absolutely think you should face criminal liability for that.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
      > So are you suggesting that every time an employee commits a crime, CEOs should go to jail alongside them? Pretty much, yeah. Happens in the military (not always, of course, but more common). The argument I always hear, justifying the enormous pay differential, between the CEO and their staff, is that the CEO is ultimately responsible for everything. In practice, this almost is never the case.
      - robertlagrant 2y ago
        The main reason for CEO pay is that's what it costs to hire a CEO.
        disgruntledphd2 2y ago
- georgesimon 2y ago
  Indeed, and from the other side, there may not have been any progress at all without the support of Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom.
- n4r9 2y ago
  Arguably this is (yet another) failure of the outsourcing of public services to the lowest bidder.
- ClumsyPilot 2y ago
  > Many of those culpable are pretty ordinary You misattribute The whole point of this coverup was to benefit the elites or cover up their failings. We have a dodgy contract, acceptance of a faulty system, and desire to cover up its failings because that would lead to ruined careers at the C level. Misallocation of funds would be investigated, we would have to figure out where did millions of dollars actually disappear to, etc. The middle classes involved, solicitors, etc. are culpable in the sense that they serviced the machine and enabled it, but they not the beneficiaries, they are just cog in the machine. If a specific person would refuse, another would soon take his place. So the real blame lies with those who were comfortable giving outright criminal orders.
piltdownman 2y ago
If you have a chance, the sedately paced but brutal TV adaptation of the scandal is well worth the watch. What they did to a demographic of genial middle-aged village shop proprietors to cover up their own administrative and regulatory failings was nothing short of stochastic terrorism. https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20240112-post-office-scandal-how-a-tv-drama-shook-up-britain-in-just-a-week https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20240112-post-office-sca...
- cmiller1 2y ago
  How exactly is this stochastic terrorism?
- calpaterson 2y ago
  There is also a podcast. It's more in-depth than the tv series and has been updated over the years. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/series/m000jf7j https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/series/m000jf7j
  - dwighttk 2y ago
    Thanks for the rec
cesaref 2y ago
It's not about peers and poor, it's about immigrants, and racism within the post office - the abhorrent assumption that immigrant families who get contracts as sub postmasters were 'on the make'. It was reported in the lords that >40% of those prosecuted were immigrants, with a high proportion of asian women, which, given the very low level of asian women in the prison population is hard to believe. For reference, hansard has what was discussed in the lords: https://hansard.parliament.uk/lords/2024-02-19/debates/E6D46CF3-EAB7-489E-ADA8-17F64CF3528F/PostOfficeHorizonScandalRacism https://hansard.parliament.uk/lords/2024-02-19/debates/E6D46...

barrkel 2y ago

This seems like perversion of the legal process. It's the kind of thing that gets custodial sentences when normal people do it. Looking at https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/offences/crown-court/item/perverting-the-course-of-justice/ https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/offences/crown-court/it... it seems like A1 for culpability / harm, 2-7 years prison.

intunderflow 2y ago
There will be zero consequences from this report though, so it doesn't matter what could theoretically happen.

rlpb 2y ago

> ‘I was simply not aware of the duties on a prosecutor to make sure an expert witness was fully aware of their duties.’ We cannot have a system where people can be wrongly convicted while being denied a proper defence due to incompetence. Either incompetence cannot be a defence, or convictions must not be permitted to be made where incompetence might lead to an injustice. Or another way of looking at this: "the prosecution's case would fail if anybody involved on the prosecution's side turns out to be incompetent" should be an absolute defence in any trial and if that situation arises then it must always fail to result in a conviction.

RobotToaster 2y ago
If "ignorance of law excuses no one" is true, you would think it would be doubly so for a prosecutor.
cogman10 2y ago
Thankfully, this sort of action would get you a mistrial in the US. The prosecutors must disclose any exculpatory material to the defense. Heck even a secret meeting with the judge, while it might not result in mistrial, is highly unusual in the US and could be brought up on appeal. There are basically no circumstances where a judge should meet with representation of just one side. Especially when that side is the government.
- rahimnathwani 2y ago
  There was a recent case in the US where: 1. The judge had a secret meeting with the prosecution. 2. The defence attorney found out about it, and challenged the judge about it. 3. The judge demanded to know how the defence attorney found out. 4. When the defence attorney refused to say, the judge ordered the attorney to be jailed for contempt of court. https://www.billboard.com/pro/young-thug-trial-judge-denies-motion-step-down-secret-meeting/ https://www.billboard.com/pro/young-thug-trial-judge-denies-...
  - thereddaikon 2y ago
    Yes and its a big story in the news and everyone knows about it. The Judge is clearly corrupt and the state supreme court have already weighed in. It's pretty clearly an extraordinary situation.

ClumsyPilot 2y ago

Many, like myself, move from a developing country to a developed country not to get a better job / more money, but instead we spend a great deal of money to get away from lawlessness. It is precisely to get away from shenanigans like this. Now i am starting to think all the great efforts were in vain

exe34 2y ago
I think it's going downhill fast. I remember being 12 and watching bbc world news, every few months, after a scandal, you'd have a minister/high ranking official apologise and resign. it was completely different from the unapologetic cnuts at the head of my birth country at the time. now we have people like Dominic Cummings who basically broke his own rules and insisted it was fine for him to keep going until he was really forced out, and of course many more of these similar cases - some even lost to a salad.
mbivert 2y ago
The grass is always greener; we have a Bengali friend whose innocence regarding how things work in the West makes us smile.
xoa 2y ago
>Now i am starting to think all the great efforts were in vain This doesn't make any sense. The difference here vs a lawless dictatorial country isn't that humans are magically all perfect angels in developed countries, but what you're seeing here: investigation by society and people caring, able to talk about it, able to research, able to muster political will around it, able to change all of government in response. This sort of case of massive abuse and criminality by very powerful figures should be rare, but when it does happen there are still fallbacks. There is still a free press that can dig into it and report on it and apply pressure doggedly for years. There are separations of powers that make it more challenging for any one entity to suppress everything. In the UK they did a full TV miniseries around this, lots of articles in major papers, there is an ongoing podcast, vs sending the first journalist to ask questions to prison. There are still regular changes of government at the vote of the population, and in turn incentive for different groups of politicians and new generations of them to gain power by digging into malfeasance of existing ones. There can still be public inquiries long after the fact. The entire point of all the various checks and balances and defense is precisely to try to, eventually, steer things back onto the right track when, not if, they start to veer off. Humans are humans the world over. The slower, louder, argumentative processes of democracy and law are our so far best effort to try to corral that reality. Of course it would be better if such things just never happened at all, but getting from A to B has always been the challenge. Noisy popping of pus is gross but much better then letting it fester under the surface forever.

ExoticPearTree 2y ago

So far, to my knowledge, none of the people that botched this spent a day in jail. So what good are these inquiries that span years until they fade out of public interest, maybe some people get a slap on the wrist and they move on with their lives like nothing happened while others had their lives ruined beyond repair?

ktallett 2y ago
Botched is being kind. Lied, cheated, and covered up to destroy people's lives when they knew at the least these people were working with a faulty system, at the most they knew these post masters were completely innocent.
whycome 2y ago
Gasp but the head had to give up her Order of the British Empire designation!
- petesergeant 2y ago
  And also missed out on a suggested Bishophood (this actually happened)
krisoft 2y ago
> what good are these inquiries that span years until they fade out of public interest That appears to be the purpose of these inquiries. They very slowly and methodically move forward until the public are either forgetting about the issue or "let bygones be bygones". Until then anyone who should be held accountable (criminally or politically) can answer that they cannot comment on the matter while the inquiries are ongoing. (which is in itself a way to ice the discussion while making it appear as if the person asking the question is out of order, and not the person not answering them) It is a delaying tactic by powerful people against less powerful in the society. Change my mind if you can.
- petesergeant 2y ago
  > That appears to be the purpose of these inquiries Strong disagree. I’d say these drip drip disclosures are swaying public opinion and we’ll end up in a position where the public are clamouring for blood.

unfocused 2y ago

Private meetings are fine. No issue there. The judge however, erred. He should've never allowed the disclosure to not be disclosed. You can redact information that is harmful to the state, or is not relevant to the case, but in this case, the fact that the system that was being used as the basis of detection of fraud, was in itself being audited, should've meant that it was to be included and disclosed to defense. In my non-lawyer opinion, the judge is the one that erred, and it is compounded that this matter came up in a private meeting without defense, thereby supporting the idea that private meetings should never be had, when there are always exceptions for them. So yes, this looks really bad all around.

cogman10 2y ago
Perhaps in the UK, but in the US a private meeting is not fine. The term is ex parte and in most states if it isn't outright banned it's highly discouraged. Pretty much the only time it's allowed is when there's classified information in the mix, and for that there's a huge process beforehand to make sure the defense has access to enough information to make their defense.
- rahimnathwani 2y ago
  It doesn't seem like there was a 'huge process beforehand' in the case I mentioned: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40810045 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40810045 And I'm pretty sure there was no 'classified information in the mix'.
  - cogman10 2y ago
    Yeah, that's a corrupt judge that's going to be reversed on appeal. The part that sucks is there likely won't be any other consequence for the judge over this bs behavior. He should be impeached and removed.
mjcl 2y ago
This article presents a very odd version of what happened. Simon Clarke was the lawyer that actually stopped the Post Office prosecutions as soon as he got involved. In this case he went to the judge and said he was aware of the existence of a report that needed to be disclosed, but it could not be given to anyone (including Simon Clarke) until the report had been presented to parliament. The judge granted the exemption for 8 weeks, after which the report was provided to the defense.

pjc50 2y ago

> "public interest immunity" This is a dead giveaway that someone is setting up a miscarriage of justice to protect someone in power. They were a crucial part of the Matrix-Churchill fiasco, for example. https://www.theguardian.com/world/defence-and-security-blog/2012/nov/09/arms-iraq-saddam-hussein https://www.theguardian.com/world/defence-and-security-blog/... https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/the-cover-up-a-hope-the-scott-report-will-usher-in-changes-to-the-disclosure-laws-/20225.article https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/the-cover-up-a-hope-the-sc...

gwd 2y ago

> Smith suggested that an investigation report from the time should not be disclosed to [Noel Thomas] when it was reviewed in 2014. If it was to be disclosed, the inquiry heard, it should be heavily redacted – and Smith himself had written that Thomas should not be shown a Post Office note from 2005 which noted that operator Fujitsu was testing the reliability of Horizon. > ‘Such a [note] may well invite a request for disclosure of the test results,’ Smith had emailed a colleague. ‘There may also be a risk that [Thomas] will suggest the investigation was inadequate or incomplete.’ Yeah, no shit. You know, in my company we have yearly "compliance training" courses where we have to hear imaginary stories about employees who gave gifts to potential clients, illegally agreed to divide up the market with competitors, and so on. I feel like everyone in the prosecutor's office should be forced to read a certain number of cases of innocent people who were wrongly convicted every year, including all the quotes like this.

belter 2y ago

For the UK legal system the meme needs to be : Attribute to malice what most would consider just incompetence....

dboreham 2y ago
Quick note that there isn't a UK legal system. Article relates to England and Wales.

DarkmSparks 2y ago

Tip of the iceberg imho, I would say this is fairly standard practice in UK law now for everything from police notebooks to dna evidence. UK legal system stopped being about law and became all about trying to stem the collapse of trust in it a very long time ago. Now imho there is nothing to trust, every decision some corrupt kafka like show of idiocy. To see how corrupt they are you only need to look at Rishi soon sacked taking pride in a promise to leave the EHCR if they dont let him deprive a few people of basic human rights in order to demonstrate he is tough on immigration - all while his government gives every illegal immigrant free hotel accomodation and a huge weekly allowance higher to make them come in the first place. The only thing we are seeing here is yet another public glimpse into why no one I know still in the UK, rich or poor, has any faith in its institutions any more.

LocutusOfBorges 2y ago
> all while his government gives every illegal immigrant free hotel accomodation and a huge weekly allowance higher to make them come in the first place. People seeking asylum in the UK receive £49.18 per week[1], and get thrown into monstrously low quality accommodation - the current government essentially throws them into prison barges[2]. You really should read something other than tabloids. The reality of the situation is nothing like what you’ve described. [1] https://www.gov.uk/asylum-support/what-youll-get https://www.gov.uk/asylum-support/what-youll-get [2] https://theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/may/14/people-on-bibby-stockholm-treated-like-cattle-former-workers-say https://theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/may/14/people-o...
- DarkmSparks 2y ago
  You seem to miss they are coming from countries where the average salary for a 70 hour working week is £50 a month while they lived in a corrugated steal house with no electricity, (mostly because the American proxies blew up their actual houses) meanwhile, after 6 months of failing to find a job english families are being thrown onto the streets by the 10s of thousands to live in sleeping bags and eat from food banks. 1 in 52 people in London is homeless - the belief is none of them are immigrants. In that world routinely keeping key evidence from the defence, and far worse, is 100% to be expected.

intunderflow 2y ago

The UK legal system (in all its nations) is very much a broken and unfair one where power alone decides your guilt through abuse of procedure. Just look at their private prosecution system, the government pays the bills of the private prosecutor but not the defense so you can just run the trial until your opponent is bankrupt.

ActionHank 2y ago

People's lives were ruined over this. People committed suicide over this. Those complicit in ruining their lives to cover the blunder of the post office, execs, and third party companies should see jail time. The careers and paychecks of the wealthy and powerful do not trump justice and lives lost.

deleted 2y ago

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fmajid 2y ago

The Post Office’s culpability is manifest, but this is first and foremost a massive miscarriage of justice that discredits the British judiciary and its chumminess with fellow Establishment members.

alberto6996 2y ago

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