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The Post Office and the Miscarriage of Justice: Paul Marshall

Paul Marshall, barrister, describes his experience in the Post Office Ltd case, his role in establishing second category abuse of process by the Post Office, his obtaining the Clarke Advice and his dismay at the catastrophic consequences of the widespread and frequent failure by the judiciary to understand computer evidence (N.B. at 14.58 Paul says 'the Post Office' when he meant to say 'the CCRC'). Paul is listed in Chambers & Partners Global Rankings for commercial litigation. In 2017, serious illness interrupted his practice. In convalescence he volunteered to represent without charge three of those prosecuted by the Post Office and wrongfully imprisoned in the scandal of the most widespread miscarriage of justice in recent English legal history - possibly, since the witch trials. With his junior, Flora Page, Paul, alone among the barristers acting for the 42 appellants and in the face of opposition, insisted that the Court of Appeal should hear and determine, as a free-standing separate ground of appeal, that the Post Office had engaged in conduct liable to undermine the integrity of the criminal justice system and to threaten public confidence in it. This is called ’second category abuse of process’. He was also responsible for eliciting from the Post Office in November 2020 the now infamous ‘Clarke Advice’. It revealed that, from 2013, the Post Office knew that its principal technical witness had repeatedly given misleading evidence to the court about the reliability of the Post Office’s Horizon computer system and in doing so had put the Post Office in breach of its duty as prosecutor. The Post Office suppressed that knowledge and withheld it from those it had prosecuted for 8 years. Paul’s three clients had to wait a combined total of 44 years for their wrongful convictions to be quashed. In the face of vague unspecified threats from the Court of Appeal of proceedings against him for contempt of court (that carry risk of imprisonment) for his having passed to the Metropolitan Police a copy of the Clarke Advice, a threat eventually withdrawn only in April 2021, Paul felt compelled to withdraw from representing his clients in December 2020. The Court of Appeal upheld second category abuse of process by the Post Office in 39 of the 42 appeals. Articles by Paul Marshall include: Denialism, the latest entrants https://www.appgbanking.org.uk/wp-con... (February 2020); The harm that judges do, misunderstanding computer evidence. Mr Castleton’s story https://journals.sas.ac.uk/deeslr/art... (May 2020); English law’s evidential presumption that computer systems are reliable: time for a rethink? https://cornerstonebarristers.com/cms... (July 2020); Recommendations for the Probity of Computer Evidence (with James Christie, Prof. Peter Bernard Ladkin, Prof. Bev Littlewood, Stephen Mason, Prof. Martin Newby, Dr. Jonathan Rogers, Prof. Harold Thimbleby and Prof. Martyn Thomas, C.B.E. https://journals.sas.ac.uk/deeslr/art... (November 2020); Scandal at the Post Office: The intersection of law ethics and politics https://journals.sas.ac.uk/deeslr/art... (Text of two lectures, January 2022).