“This amendment overturns the current legal assumption that evidence from computers is always reliable which has contributed to miscarriages of justice including the Horizon Scandal.”
English courts assume a computer worked properly if it looked like it worked properly. That puts the burden on the defendant to prove the machine was broken. Seema Misra and Lee Castleton learned how hard that is against Horizon. Lord Arbuthnot’s amendment to the Data (Use and Access) Bill would let courts question the system itself. Barrister Stephen Mason has been calling the presumption broken for more than a decade, and Parliament is only now getting around to an amendment.