First subpostmaster Horizon conviction overturned in Scotland
The first wrongful conviction of a subpostmaster in Scotland has been overturned, as a part of the widest miscarriage of justice in UK historical past.
Susan Sinclair, beforehand a subpostmaster in north-east Scotland, is the primary in the nation to see her attraction towards conviction profitable on the High Court in Edinburgh, taking the UK complete to 93.
She was convicted after trial in 2004 of embezzling a sum of cash on the idea of a report from the Horizon laptop system, which she denied. A neighborhood order was imposed.
A Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission investigation referred to the attraction court docket in Edinburgh on the grounds that she had suffered a miscarriage of justice. The court docket agreed and quashed her conviction.
Law agency Livingstone Brown, which represented Sinclair, mentioned: “She ought to by no means have been accused of any wrongdoing, far much less convicted.
“Lessons must be learnt from this national scandal to ensure that these events never happen again. But the question remains as to why it has taken so long to get to this point, four years after the High Court in England issued a damning verdict on the Horizon computer system.”
There are one other 5 appeals due in Scotland, with the convictions of former subpostmasters Aleid Kloosterhuis, William Quarm, Colin Smith, Judith Smith and Robert Thomson anticipated to be heard quickly.
Computer errors
Computer Weekly first reported on the issues with the Fujitsu-supplied Horizon system in 2009, when it made public the tales of a gaggle of subpostmasters whose lives had been ruined once they had been blamed for accounting shortfalls brought on by laptop errors (see timeline of Computer Weekly articles beneath).
Some had been despatched to jail, many had been closely fined, massive numbers had been made bankrupt and households had been ruined. It has been described as the most important miscarriage of justice in UK authorized historical past. A complete of 736 former subpostmasters had been prosecuted in England, primarily based on proof from the Horizon laptop system used in Post Office branches. Until the High Court judgment in 2019, the Post Office had denied that unexplained shortfalls could possibly be brought on by Horizon errors.
The CCRC started reviewing English circumstances in 2015, and the primary convictions to be overturned got here in December 2020. In England, greater than 80 former subpostmasters have up to now had their legal convictions overturned, and extra are anticipated.
In September 2020, following a lot of circumstances referred for attraction by England’s CCRC, the SCCRC took what it described as an “unusual step” and wrote to greater than 70 folks with potential wrongful convictions. It started reviewing the primary set of circumstances in March 2021.
Scotland has a separate authorized system, and the SCCRC is historically about 10% of the scale of the CCRC in England in phrases of circumstances.
