About This Project
Hearsay From a Computer
This project aims to evaluate how legal professionals, including judges and lawyers, perceive the reliability of digital evidence generated by or derived from computers, including through artificial intelligence
and algorithms, compared with non-digital types of evidence (exhibits, witness testimony, etc).
A small but growing body of literature has been challenging the presumption of reliability of computer evidence in the wake of the Post Office debacle in which hundreds of wrongful convictions resulted based on erroneous evidence generated by the Horizon software system (Christie, 2020; Ladkin et al 2024; McCormack 2016; De Silva 2024). Following this scandal, the Ministry of Justice has recently opened a consultation on whether the common law presumption of reliability of computer evidence is fit for the modern digital age.
But alongside revisiting the particulars of the rules of evidence on computer-generated evidence, it is imperative to consider the impact that 25 years of this flawed presumption has had on the perceptions of legal practitioners as to the reliability of computer generated evidence.We hypothesize that lawyers’ and judges perceptions of the reliability of computer-generated evidence contributed to the miscarriages of justice seen in the Post Office cases due to an overreliance on the reliability of computer derived evidence that has developed over a quarter century of practice under this evidential presumption.
