Post Office: We continue to take extensive action to fully address the past
Two more sub-postmasters were exonerated last week over the Post Office Horizon scandal.
On 9 June Southwark Crown Court formally acquitted two people in cases referred by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), in uncontested appeals. The cases, from 2003 and 2005 relate to convictions in Magistrates’ Courts in which Post Office acted as prosecutor.
A Post Office spokesman said: “We are sincerely sorry for the impact of historical failures on the lives of the people affected.
“We continue to take extensive action to fully address the past and to ensure past shortcomings can never be repeated. We have undertaken fundamental reforms to rebuild trust and forge a new relationship with our current postmasters.”
Post Office ceased prosecutions related to Horizon computer evidence in 2015. Appeals of cases began in 2020 following the ‘Horizon Issues’ Judgment in civil Group Litigation and, to date, there have now been 74 historical convictions overturned in unopposed appeals. In addition, there has been one conviction overturned in a conceded appeal in which the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) was the Respondent, not Post Office.
Between 2000 and 2014, the Post Office prosecuted 736 sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses based on information from a recently installed computer system called Horizon.
