39 Post Office convictions quashed after Fujitsu evidence about Horizon IT platform called into question
- Reference: 1619187312
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/04/23/post_office_scandal_fujitsu_convictions_quashed/
- Source link:
Those 39 convictions were obtained by the Post Office's in-house lawyers who ignored their own barristers' advice that the institution's behaviour was trampling over established prosecutorial codes intended to promote fairness and honesty.
Lord Justice Holroyde said that the one-time state monopoly had, by representing Horizon as reliable, "effectively sought to reverse the burden of proof," leading to criminal defendants having to prove their innocence instead of the Post Office showing they were guilty. Its lawyers compounded this by withholding evidence from courts and defence lawyers alike – evidence which clearly showed the Post Office and Fujitsu knew Horizon wasn't generating accurate accounting records.
[1]
Each prosecution challenged in the Court of Appeal over the past year relied on data from the Horizon business management platform supplied by Fujitsu. This data, called "ARQ data" by the court, was a "complete and accurate record of all keystrokes made" on Horizon by sub-postmasters and their branch office staff.
Yet ARQ data was not often made available in the Post Office's Crown Court prosecutions, leading to unjustifiable convictions and coerced guilty pleas.
Wrongly deprived of evidence needed to show that the Post Office's cases against them were flawed, many sub-postmasters pleaded guilty in the hope of getting reduced sentences rather than maintaining their innocence at court. Many also wanted to avoid the wrath of judges who had been told they were unrepentant thieves and false accounters.
Holroyde, giving the Court of Appeal's judgment today, [2]referred to an earlier civil High Court judgment from Mr Justice Fraser, who savaged the Post Office's claims that Horizon was sound.
[3]
"Fraser J referred to two particular bugs, known as the Callendar Square bug and the Receipts and Payments Mismatch ('RPM') bug," said Lord Justice Holroyde. "In his 'Common Issues' judgment at [541], he had described the RPM bug as one of the bugs in respect of which contemporaneous internal documents showed 'at least to some degree, an awareness of Horizon problems within the Post Office itself over a number of years'."
That RPM bug was found to be affecting 40 branches back in 2010, when Post Office prosecutors were jailing their own employees for accounting shortfalls generated by Horizon. Indeed, the court found today that even the Post Office itself didn't believe that sub-postmasters "were exploiting the bug intentionally."
Yet, to prevent their despicable behaviour coming to light, the Post Office vowed to press on regardless with prosecutions.
Fujitsu was complicit
The Court of Appeal found that Fujitsu's involvement was just as deep as the Post Office's. Holroyde found that the company "had the ability and facility to insert, inject, edit or delete transaction data or data in branch accounts, to implement fixes in Horizon that had the potential to affect transaction data or data in branch accounts or to rebuild branch transaction data, all without the knowledge or consent of the SPM [sub-postmaster] in question."
If Fujitsu injected a transaction into a branch account, "this would look as though the SPM had done it."
The Japan-headquartered company did so at the Post Office's request in some cases where SPMs dug their heels in and refused to accept responsibility for Horizon-generated shortfalls.
[4]
It got worse. Fujitsu supplied an expert witness to back up the Post Office's Crown Court assertions that Horizon was infallible, so far as accounting shortfalls were concerned. Barrister Simon Clarke, who in 2013 warned the Post Office that its behaviour was "in breach of their duty as a prosecutor," wrote in legal advice to its prosecutors that Fujitsu man Gareth Jenkins had made unjustifiable claims about the system.
Jenkins repeatedly told various courts in written statements: "In summary I would conclude by saying that I fully believe that Horizon will accurately record all data that is submitted to it and correctly account for it."
Clarke said: "Unfortunately that was not the case, certainly between the dates spanned by the statements I have extracted here, the 5th October 2012 and the 3rd April 2013." He also said the Post Office should stop using Jenkins as an expert witness, not least because as an employee of Fujitsu testifying about a Fujitsu system he was clearly not impartial, as experts are supposed to be.
Computer says yes so we'd best agree
Nonetheless, many Crown Court judges around the country appeared to have taken Jenkins at his word. The Court of Appeal hinted at this without making any concrete findings about Jenkins' conduct, saying today that had Fujitsu and the Post Office been honest, "no judge would have been placed in the unhappy position of learning – as some judges (or retired judges) will do if they read this judgment – that they unwittingly sentenced a person who had been prevented by the prosecutor from having a fair trial."
In a prepared statement Fujitsu said today: "Fujitsu was not a party to the recent Court of Appeal proceedings relating to sub-postmasters' criminal convictions and so is not in a position to comment. We are continuing to cooperate with the ongoing Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry."
In late 2019, some of the company's staff [5]were referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions due to concerns over the veracity of evidence they had given in other Horizon cases, alongside [6]Jenkins and a fellow company court witness, Anne Chambers .
Today brings justice to the following people, whose criminal convictions were quashed:
Josephine Hamilton, Hughie Thomas, Allison Henderson, Alison Hall, Gail Ward, Julian Wilson (deceased), Jacqueline McDonald, Tracy Felstead, Janet Skinner, Scott Darlington, Seema Misra, Della Robinson, Khayyam Ishaq, David Hedges, Peter Holmes (deceased), Rubina Shaheen, Damien Owen, Mohammed Rasul, Wendy Buffrey, Kashmir Gill, Barry Capon, Vijay Parekh, Lynette Hutchings, Dawn O’Connell (deceased), Carl Page, Lisa Brennan, William Graham, Siobhan Sayer, Tim Burgess, Pauline Thomson, Nicholas Clark, Margery Williams, Tahir Mahmood, Ian Warren, David Yates, Harjinder Butoy, Gillian Howard, David Blakey and Pamela Lock.
The Post Office said it was contacting other former SPMs to advise them how they could appeal against their convictions, and expressed remorse for its previous behaviour. These statements [7]didn't stop it from awarding Fujitsu a £42m extension to the Horizon contract a fortnight ago.
A government [8]review of the scandal is ongoing , though it lacks the powers of a full-blown public inquiry.
Three convictions, those of Wendy Cousins, Stanley Fell and Neelam Hussain, were upheld today. ®
Bootnote
The Post Office scandal came to light over the last decade through the dogged work of Private Eye magazine, Computer Weekly, and freelance journalist Nick Wallis.
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[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/legal&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YILvHCHgAjjPQkSJBub97gAAAII&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2019/03/15/post_office_horizon_it_system_initial_judgment/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/legal&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YILvHCHgAjjPQkSJBub97gAAAII&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
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[5] https://www.theregister.com/2019/12/18/post_office_trial_fujitsu_horizon_judgment/
[6] https://www.postofficetrial.com/2020/11/fujitsu-staff-under-criminal.html
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/07/post_office_fujitsu_horizon_extension/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/11/ukgov_post_office_fujitsu_horizon_review/
[9] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: And still...
and the penalties should be at least those suffered by the post masters: imprisonment, large fines that will bankrupt some of them, their names published as crooks, ...
Re: And still...
> No senior post officer manager, director, part of their legal team or representative of Fujitsu has been hauled into court on any charge relating to their corporate dishonesty regarding this.......
Don't you worry. The senior bod at the Post Office is a marked man. His retirement CBE is going to be downgraded to an MBE and he'll never live down the shame.
Re: And still...
Paula Vennells, who was awarded CBE in 2019 for "services to the Post Office and to charity”, moved on from Post Office CEO to the Imperial College NHS Trust in April 2019. From then on [1]she went onto other things .
Strangely enough she is an anglican priest yet put many people through a lot of suffering.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Vennells
The PO now MUST compensate ALL of those who have been cleared and NOT fight the compensation claims, own up and pay up
Now can we please see senior executives from the period in the dock...
... the time has surely come...
Re: Now can we please see senior executives from the period in the dock...
doubtful how long has it taken the Police in charge at Hilsbourgh to be brought to account in court. These feckers always escape Justice.
Perjury?
Seems like the very least that Chambers and Jenkins should be up for, possibly "Perverting the Course of Justice" too.
I wonder which senior PO staff will be charged too (will be and should be will be rather different lists)?
Re: Perjury?
It seems to me that the responsible individuals at both the Post Office and at Fujitsu, along with the PO lawyers who aided and abetted the wrongful prosecutions should all be held to account for their actions.
I would also imagine there is a case for a group litigation against the above, through the civil courts as well.
Hanging is too good for'em, a damn good flogging and a few years breaking rocks and confiscation of their property, would be a start.
Re: Perjury?
The fact that their own lawyers told the PO higher ups that they were in breach of laws regarding prosecutions should be considered an aggravating factor. This is more than perjury, it is surely conspiracy to pervert the course of justice repeatedly. The deliberate withholding of evidence from both prosecution and defence teams about relevant failures in the Horizon system is unlawful in the UK.
The other thing is that clearly none of the prosecution, defence or the judges in any of these cases had heard of penetration testing, or even basic system administration capabilities such as creating and administering the user (Sub Post Master) accounts. The judges should have been advised about IT security and evaluation and been far more inquisitive. I know Prof Ross Anderson can come across as a bit strident sometimes, but he would have been very useful to the defendants in pointing out that computers are as fallible as the people who build and run them.
I am genuinely appalled at the treatment of the Post Office employees, and really concerned at the lack of basic IT knowledge of the judges and solicitors involved in the court hearings. The Justice Department really needs to step up and make sure that judges hearing cases are competent to do so. Expertise in law is not enough these days.
System Failure
As technology becomes a bigger and bigger part of all our lives, the legal system needs to gear up to deal with technology based cases - judges, lawyers, the CPS, the police, everyone.
I cannot understand how anyone was convicted on the premise that an IT system was infallible. There ain't no such animal, and it should have been easy to find qualified people to testify to this.
Clearly many people failed individually, and many behaved dishonestly and corruptly (but not the sub post masters). However the legal system as a whole failed. Nobody in the system saw the hundreds of prosecutions of previously upstanding citizens, and nobody challenged the nonsensical and self serving testimony of witnesses who said that Horizon always worked.
Lock up the post office execs who are responsible, but also set up legal infrastructure so that this sort of thing can never happen again
So when?
When will we see the criminal actions of the Post Office and others examined in court?
There seems to be grounds for charges of perjury, false accounting and all sorts of other fun stuff...
Lock up
the PO execs responsible?
It aint gonna happen, most will have either moved on or more likely gone into retirement by now.
And by the time the laws courts/government inquiry reports back to the CPS , most of the execs will be dead of old age with the rest being 'too old to prosecute'
Then the PO will put out a statement about lessons will be learned and whole lot shoved under the carpet and forgotten about.
Re: Lock up
>Then the PO will put out a statement about lessons will be learned
Although they will send it 2nd class and lose it
The question of compensation
as well as sanctions including total forfeiture of any pension or retirement savings from individuals at Fujitsu, the PO, as well as the complicit lawyers and solicitors needs to be settled.
Quickly
What a bunch of bastards.
I think Computer Weekly was quite involved with running on this story back in the day. So many are culpable for this sh1t show, as even when it was known years ago that the PO was talking horse shit and knew about the issues, other senior PO staff not involved with the initial lies continued with the cover-up.
Having been a customer of and worked alongside Fujitsu
I have no doubt that the spineless managers at any point told their customer 'no' when they were asked to inject false records.
In all fairness, Fujitsu have some great staff, but are well known for paying below what their competitors and I truly hope that Fujitsu are held as much account as the Post Office is, they are after all responsible for delivering an account system that could count correctly.
Having been subjected to having to use some of their systems, used a help desk staff by them and worked on a project with them, God help anyone who gives them a contract.
But they are currently winning everything they are bidding for, not that I doubt their bid teams efforts and proposals, but the price that they come in at undercutting even their most ferociously priced competition.
I am glad there is some light at the end for the victims, but for those who have lost everything, the families of those who have tried, and succeeded, to commit suicide, the families split and for all the years these people have lost, and all because of a few managers and staff who had no ethical bone in their bodies.
There will be cheering outside of any court for any perjury case that arises from this.
And still...
No senior post officer manager, director, part of their legal team or representative of Fujitsu has been hauled into court on any charge relating to their corporate dishonesty regarding this.......