This Justice Computer does have merit, regardless of whether Ronald was guilty. Actual innocence or guilt is not usually what courts are about.
Most people think that the phrase "justice must be seen to be done" means that "justice must be done and it must be seen to be done" but that is not true. It means just what it says on the tin. It must be seen to be done but it does not necessarily have to be done.
For example, in English law, to overturn a court's decision, it is not enough to prove that the court got the facts wrong. The original court is the sole judge of the facts and if they get them wrong, that's just unfortunate. Until fairly recently, it was not even enough to prove that the court drew an illogical conclusion from the facts. Apart from the new argument of illogicality, the only chance an appellant has is for his or her lawyer to convince an appeal court that the correct rules were not followed in the gathering, disclosure or presentation of evidence.
Based mainly on an episode of Perry Mason that I watched, I think that American appellants face a similar problem. Sitting as an appeal court judge, Perry rejected an appeal. He then went on to help to prove the person's innocence, explaining that as an appeal court judge, he had not been interested in the appellant's innocence, only in whether she had had a fair trial, which in US law she had.
Laws and evidence are so complicated that a computer is probably the only way to get a fair decision based even on the facts that are presented. I remember the O J Simpson trial in which the jury was bombarded with a huge amount of damning but, to a layperson, baffling scientific evidence, including but not limited to an expert claim that in a population the size of Los Angeles', only one person was likely to have DNA consistent with what was found on the physical evidence and Simpson's DNA was consistent. The defence had no answer to most of the evidence but found an expert who claimed that about ten people in a population the size of LA's could have consistent DNA. In the end, though, the jury was swayed by the fact that Simpson appeared to have difficulty in putting on the gloves that the murderer was alleged to have worn. The forensics experts must have wept.
