“The more you deny, the more you admit.” Possible? Most certainly.
Stephen Bradshaw deflected and waffled and often conducted himself in Sir Wyn Williams’ Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry like he was talking in the pub with his mates. With his gnarly verbals, this terminal ignoramus couldn’t even say “false accounting” coherently. And again we had the new trend of verbal ping-pong between PO investigator and instructing solicitors over (lack of) disclosure. But acting like a plastic gangster and fitting up innocent people with criminal offences brings a certain karma.
In investigative psychology we use the term 'interpersonal coherence' which is a consistency between the way offenders interact with their victims (which in Bradshaw's case were innocent postmasters) and with others in their everyday lives (being Bradshaw's 'like-minded' investigators and ethically-challenged Post Office lawyers).
BUT, going back to my opening line, on an evidential point, the game plan backfired. The way Bradshaw threw Diane Matthews under the bus, imbued with his admission (that word again) of himself signing his section 9 witness statement(s) that he hadn’t even written. Did he even read it before signing?
If it was so, that an innocent postmaster was convicted on fabricated evidence that Bradshaw’s testimony, being perverse 'documentary hearsay' that with dumb obedience he put his signature to, formed a material part of, and thus prima-facie ‘not believed his own evidence to be true’ given that said 'conveyor-belt' evidence was concocted by his 'instructing lawyers', then the Perjury Act 1911 ought to make an appearance.
Being a Post Office lawyer's puppet or a (quote) "small cog" isn't even mitigation. Signing that witness statement was indubitably a decision to act in the way he did geared towards the outcome that occurred - malicious prosecution. Added to Mr. Bradshaw's knowledge of faults in Horizon, what's his next excuse?
Naturally, one didn't expect Mr. Bradshaw et al to give simple honest answers, but in this case, with this neat piece of 'evidential displacement', if Mr. Bradshaw hasn’t committed perjury in this statutory inquiry by batting away every question, he just inadvertently proved he did in the criminal cases he was called to this inquiry about. Take your pick Sir!
It was a bilious experience seeing Stephen Bradshaw giving evidence but the innocent postmasters maliciously prosecuted saw one of the Post Office's useful idiots. One with a congenital case of 'Groupthink-itis' who slavishly followed an agenda of corruption and investigative malpractice. His double-talk, finger-pointing and buck-passing leaves Bradshaw's evidence as an amorphous mess. Only criminal investigation can arise from the mire. In any case a good case study in investigations training – who not to work with and how not to investigate.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Ian Ross is an Associate Professor of International Law at Bircham International University, a listed expert for the International Criminal Court (ICC) and a Panel Expert for the Inspectorate of Prisons (Ireland).