Thread by @nickwallis

Holy Moly - Post Office are contacting 540 criminalised Subpostmasters and others whose convictions might be unsafe. Given it prosecuted 736 and 45 have already had their convictions overturned we’re now into slam dunk biggest potential miscarriage of justice ever.

The Post Office legal team in 2013/4 need to be looking at themselves, including Chris Aujard, Rodric Williams (still at the PO) and Jarnail Singh. The CK Sift Review produced clear evidence of a couple of dozen potentially unsafe prosecutions in 2014.

That information was kept SECRET from MPs and the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance. As I said a couple of days back - had that information been given to MPs and campaigners, then hundreds more prosecuted Subpostmasters would at least...

… have the opportunity to find out if their convictions were unsafe. By failing to inform MPs and campaigners of the existence of the Clarke Advice or CK Sift review the Post Office was possibly perverting the course of justice. Don’t forget the ONLY reason the CCRC felt...

… able to refer any cases to the Court of Appeal was because of the judgments in the Bates v Post Office civil case which the Post Office fought tooth and nail by chucking millions and trying to make it go away (including trying to have the judge removed)...

The Post Office, as recently as 2015 was not telling the truth about remote access to the Horizon computer system. As recently as 2019 it was trying to claim it had the legal right to treat its Subpostmasters “arbitrarily, irrationally or capriciously” - (which is how...

… Lord Justice Coulson came to describe its attitude as reminiscent of a "a mid-Victorian factory-owner.”)

… it sent legal threats to journalists, at least one man to his death (after the problems with Horizon were well known at BOARD level)...

… and now it’s coming clean on something it should have been doing the moment the Second Sight Interim Report was published on 8 July 2013.

Instead, for whatever reason - and I can only assume it was money - it decided to cover up the results of the initial legal...

… investigation into the implications of the Interim Report, which had the effect of potentially denying hundreds of Subpostmasters justice because the Subpostmaster did know their convictions might be unsafe, but the Post Office did.

That, my friends, is where we are at. I...

… will now put that or words to that effect in a blog post. In the meantime, @Karlfl has done it the other way round for @ComputerWeekly - read his report here: computerweekly.com/news/252500406…

@Karlfl @ComputerWeekly Full story - 540 MORE prosecutions could be unsafe:
postofficetrial.com/2021/05/540-mo…
Includes comment from former barrister Lord Arbuthnot calling for police investigation into PO execs.
#PostOfficeScandal