Originally Posted by
falcon900
I hear you, but the post office inquiry is still a work in progress. I am inclined to wait for it rather than hand complete sovereignty in the matter over to the ITV drama department. They are due credit for finally propelling the scandal into the full public consciousness ( with some help from the fact this is an election year!) but I suspect what will emerge will be much more nuanced. Listening to some of the evidence from hands on Fujitsu programmers during the week gave some hint of that. Not seeking to promote thread drift, just a word in defence of our Courts. They are not easily or often duped.
As Chug says, this is not thread drift. The vulnerability of our courts to being duped by expert witnesses is precisely on point to this thread. While your attention may only have been drawn to the Post Office scandal by the TV drama, mine was not, and as such you might care to join me in having read the following:
- Mr Justice Fraser's 'Horizon Issues' judgement from the civil case in 2019
- His letter referring two of the expert witnesses from earlier prosecutions to the Director of Public Prosecutions
- The 'Clarke Advice' of 2013, disclosed in the Court of Appeal in late 2020
- The Court of Appeal judgement of 2021 quashing the first batch of convictions
All available through an easy Google search. The facts as collectively set out there are already damning enough for the reputation of the legal profession and expert witnesses, and the ongoing inquiry is making things worse, not better, in that regard. Accordingly I won't be joining you in sitting on the fence.
I am also reminded that AH's expert witness evidence was developed by a paediatrician, with no aviation medicine background, and (I may be wrong here) with some social connections into that segment of the aviation community. Try looking at that through the lens of the motivated reasoning shown by Fujitsu's expert witnesses and tell me you don't see anything to be concerned about.
Edit: in the final paragraph I've muddled up the criminal trial with the
High Court hearing at which the Coroner sought disclosure of cockpit video, to which a paediatric oncologist friend of AH's submitted a paper about cognitive impairment which was rightly given short shrift by the court. The criminal trial had genuine expert witnesses whose evidence helped to create reasonable doubt in the jurors' minds. Oddly enough nothing more has been heard of CI since.