Not only that £59,000 was actually stolen but that the accused received the money. There was no evidence that the post masters charged ever had the money in their possession!
Can only speak for English and Welsh law, but this isn't accurate. Theft is prosecuted under the Theft Act 1968 and does not require the accused to actually receive the goods or money stolen. All the accused need do to "appropriate" property is assume the rights of the owner e.g, if the accused had access to someone's bank account and they sent money to a third-party, that's still theft because they assumed the rights of the owner (to transfer the money) even though the money didn't go to the accused themselves.
Yes, if they could have proved they also received what was stolen, that would have been a slam dunk but there are enough plausible reasons why they can't find the money. Maybe it was given to friends and family as cash, maybe it was used to gamble or to pay off some criminal.
It isn't much different than somebody saying, "you did it because we found your DNA". The Courts or Jury are inclined to believe it because "science" and if the defence are not on their game enough to show how "because DNA" is not always watertight, the defendent is seen as guilty beyond reasonbale doubt.
There is a strange presumption in here. It is true that lack of evidence doesn't always means there's evidence that there was no crime. But that shouldn't matter. A crime should only be prosecutable if it is demonstrable. We shouldn't say "oh, well the prosecution had a really hard case, we should just convict this person anyway because it wasn't fair to those lawyers." That's such a perverse way of reasoning about it.
If this was one or two cases, then sure, maybe they were really smart about hiding the money. However, there were hundreds of convictions. What is the more likely explanation?
Post office looses packages all the time, should someone go to jail for that too?
If their stuff doesn't tally, they are disorganised, they loose stuff or have idiots. Thats their problem. Maybe it's post office employees stealing shit.
Why do we immediately assume postmasters have abything to do with it without a shred of evidence?
No, it claimed that what they had sold didn't tally, a claim they never proved. The defense put forward another plausible explanation - that the software was incorrect, and the prosecution obviously didn't prove the software was accurate.
Even if the computer was right and there was a genuine discrepancy in the tally, you then need to prove that this person was the one responsible for it. Certainly in this case, there couldn't possibly have been sufficient evidence to prove they were the ones that did it if it was never done to begin with. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, but it sure as hell isn't proof of presence.
In the "we found your DNA" analogy, you're finding my DNA in my workplace where nothing has actually gone missing - how does that prove I am guilty of theft?