stewamax wrote:Tomorrow Tuesday for four days we have the long awaited Gareth Jenkins - the ultimate Horizon techo - who (it appears) was not briefed about the role of 'expert witness'. He did not disclose everything he knew about Horizon faults and features (that there was a remote access 'backdoor', for example), and this omission allowed some sub-postmasters to be gaoled when such disclosure could have saved them.
He has clearly perjured himself, but those - lawyers rather than bosses - who leant on him to 'soften' his statements to the various criminal trials are equally guilty.
It will be fascinating to see what the Inquiry counsel plan of action is: to tear him apart from the outset or to go less hard on someone who some feel is a scapegoat thrown to the wolves by PO and Fujitsu management
I wonder if that bit about not knowing the role of expert witness can really be taken at face value? I'm thinking, it's entirely plausible noone explained it, and the first he got to see of the rules was five minutes before he was due to testify. Or not at all.
From that point of view, he knows the lawyers are there to present their Client's case, regardless of the facts of that case. He has been told his role is to support the lawyers. So he too is going to present facts that help his client's case, and spin or hide any that don't. And if explicitly asked, try to evade without actively lying.
Just thinking back to how I might have reacted in my youth (and innocence) when I worked as a techie on a range of bespoke software projects for big clients (though, erm, never ICL or Fujitsu). Before we had the WWW, I could often be landed with a job I had to figure out without documentation!
That of course is pure speculation.