> I can understand how they got here: Most computer-provided evidence will be something like a printout of an email thread or a saved Excel sheet. Proving that the hard drive, printer, CPU, drivers, application software, etc. are all untampered and working properly is a huge amount of work that will very rarely end up finding a problem.
Eye witnesses, expert witnesses, etc. can be unreliable. It's very difficult to prove that they have not made any errors. However, we don't ask juries to presume they are infallible.
> Eye witnesses, expert witnesses, etc. can be unreliable. It's very difficult to prove that they have not made any errors. However, we don't ask juries to presume they are infallible.
There is a difference between being infallible and being correct. No one assumes that computers cannot err, just that they have not erred unless there is reason to believe they have. Likewise, if a witness gives coherent evidence and no one has any reason to assume they are wrong or lying, that evidence will not generally be disregarded simply because humans are fallible and therefore the evidence is presumed to be flawed.
With an eyewitness, simply saying that you think they are mistaken, with no evidence as to how they are mistaken, is sufficient. In this case, it was easier for the courts to believe hundreds of people were lying and committing fraud, then that there might have been a problem in the software. The only way to change the court's perspective was to provide evidence that was not even accessible to the defendants.
There's no reason to think that programmers are less fallible than other people.
Eye witnesses, expert witnesses, etc. can be unreliable. It's very difficult to prove that they have not made any errors. However, we don't ask juries to presume they are infallible.