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For anyone who has not heard of the “postmaster debacle”, as I; it is a stunning atrocity of government that appears to have affected 3,650 people who were houn
by highcountess 2y ago
For anyone who has not heard of the “postmaster debacle”, as I; it is a stunning atrocity of government that appears to have affected 3,650 people who were hounded and persecuted and prosecuted for various types of theft and malfeasance even though it was a glitch in the Fujitsu software that caused whatever appeared to have been thefts or irregularities in the accounting that was the basis for the government tyrannical terror descending on these people. It also cause at least four (4) suicides.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal
I suspect this also has its roots in the European legal tendency to presume guilt and the accused having to prove their innocence, far more than the system has also been poisoned with in the USA. It’s not perfect and getting worse in the USA, but in the past, it would have been incumbent upon the prosecution to prove you actually stole, not just that the system used indicated irregularities. For example there would have to be evidence of money transfers, exceptional lifestyles, video surveillance of stealing money, or at least witness testimony of some kind validating that money was stolen, etc. If something was stolen, it essentially has to be shown what happened to it, i.e., it was in the possession/control of the accused.
- Gormo 2y ago> I suspect this also has its roots in the European legal tendency to presume guilt and the accused having to prove their innocence This scandal took place in the UK, though, not in a European civil code jurisdiction. The concept of "presumption of innocence" originates in English common law.
- M2Ys4U 2y agoUnder British law, however, courts presume that a computer system is working flawlessly unless proven otherwise, so if computer says guilty it'll be tough to convince a jury that you're not. And that was made even harder by the massive and continuous perjury by the Post Office when it came to the robustness of the system