Assorted legal or political writings

Apart from a career spent mostly doing mathematics and computer science (see here) I have an interest in legal and justice issues. And I have some legal qualifications but minimal experience as a lawyer. My email address is firstname-surname at gmx.com. Comments welcome.

The UK postmasters

I got interested in this affair initially because the story was of allegedly unreliable computer software. In short, the UK post office introduced a new computer system, "Horizon", which said that numerous postmasters had lost or stolen money, and there were many prosecutions and many more demands for repayment.

An English journalist Nick Wallis has done a great deal to bring this affair to public notice. He has run two websites (one newer, one older), https://www.postofficescandal.uk/ and https://www.postofficetrial.com/ .

He also has written a book "The Great Post Office Scandal", which I found hard to put down - it's a terrific mixture of the human interest stories of the postmasters affected with a detailed account of the legal processes.

After far too long, it was accepted that the issue was far more likely to be the unreliability of the computer system than the fault of the postmasters. There was a huge civil court case, Bates v Post Office, in the UK, followed by criminal appeals to reverse previous convictions.

Having got interested in it because of my background in both law and proving computer software works correctly, I was quite gobsmacked to find my experience of doing practical statistics was also relevant to the issue, in assessing the statistical evidence of the Post Office's expert witness. Fortunately the judge didn't think much of his analyses either. I write about that (with a few comments on other points) here

UPDATE: When I wrote that piece I wasn't aware of Stephen Mason's article The use of statistics and software code in which he discusses this in detail - his article quotes and discusses Dr Worden's statistics as presented in the opening address of the counsel for the Post Office.

As part of my LLM ... , I took the 'Proof' component with Professor Twining. Professor Twining did not let anybody join his course until they passed an exam in statistics.

Reliance by the courts on computer evidence

Several academic articles on this topic are collected in special issue Volume 17 (2020) of Digital Evidence and Electronic Signature Law Review

Perverting the course of justice?

Craig Murray - imprisonment for "jigsaw identification"

Someone wrote to me

I have no interest in ever publishing the names of the complainers against Alex Salmond myself. The likelihood of someone being able to identify someone however is beyond the control of me as nobody can know what other information someone already has in regards to this. This is why jigsaw identification is such a nonsense.

an experienced journalist told me that they had never seen a judge so "emotionally invested", as Dorrian against Craig Murray

But in reading the judgments I found a lot else to write about as well, like the Moorov doctrine and "similar fact" evidence, and the nature of the intent required (or not) for a conviction.

Craig's contempt conviction was for his accounts of the trial of Alex Salmond for a whole lot of sexual offences. Of course one of the issues in writing about a Scottish court case is the differences between English and Scots law. One very notable difference is the Moorov doctrine, about the requirement for corroboration in criminal trials, and the use of "similar fact" evidence.

Another striking feature was the judge's prejudice against a "journalist in new media". I found a mass of stuff in support of such people and their role.