ISSUE 54 EWJ web - Journal - Page 50
Mind the Forensic Gap.
Filling the “I Can't Recall” spaces
by Ian Ross
The (in)famous Post Office scandal is rightly classified
as the biggest miscarriage of justice in English legal
history. But there are notable distinctions in this case.
The first being that this scandal is totally different to
the ‘Guilford 4’ and ‘Birmingham 6’ cases where
crimes had been committed but the wrong people
were convicted. But the Post Office Executive prosecuted innocent people with no crimes committed at
all. Engineering false prosecutions from nothingness
in a toxic Orwellian-esque regime triggered by Post
Office management. Mechanised by spending incalculable millions of taxpayers’ money to bring 736 malicious prosecutions. Hallucinatory allegations, based
in bigotry and misinformation. But greasily factoredin was fraudulent ‘performance’ bonuses, both incentivising the defeat of ‘enemy’ postmasters, whilst
simultaneously feeding internal corruption at every
level in the organisation.
it was vaulted over. This quickly profiles a Post Office
investigator ‘involved’ to be a liar, a fabricator, a buckpasser, and a pathological rule-bender.
In 2019 the Post Office was sued in the High Court.
Later the Court of Appeal (UK) handed down judgement with a level of severity rarely heard. Convictions
were quashed, but not due to being ‘unsafe’ as is the
norm. The cases were held to be an ‘affront to the
public conscience.’
The ensuing public inquiry (the ‘Williams’ inquiry
appointed in September 2020 representing wrongly
accused postmasters) requires evidence to be given
under oath. But it is not surprising to see (those) post
office investigators giving evidence using spurious denials with hackneyed claims of “not recalling” events
concerning their previous corruption and investigative malpractice. How ‘investigators’ with no knowledge of criminal law or investigations’ training acted as
a maladjusted ‘Groupthink army’ working to targets
in hounding and ‘setting up’ hundreds of innocent
postmasters who never stole a penny.
Over 40 years of both investigating and reviewing
investigations I am accustomed to seeing errors, even
incompetent investigations. Up a level; biased investigators in employment orientated cases who act at the
behest of their clients (paying their fees) with an investigations’ approach devoid of objectivity and thick
with employee intimidation tactics. HR Managers
commonly work in the same way. But the Post Office
cases were well beyond ‘incompetence’ when the line
from obfuscation to corruption was not only crossed,
EXPERT WITNESS JOURNAL
Post Office lawyers were proved to have been ‘directing minds’ in offering fictitious ‘plea-deals’ to entice
postmasters, saying they ‘won’t go to prison’ if they
plead guilty to a “lesser charge” but going to prison is
exactly what happened.
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APRIL 2024