Long standing saying amongst the legal profession
Better 10 guilty go free than 1 innocent person is found guilty.
The large majority of SPM were innocent BUT were found guilty by the Post Office Legal team / CPS and Procurator Fiscal (Scotland) offering up "dodgy evidence".
The Post Office did not admit there were major errors in their software / Fujitsu hiding their back door access to branch accounts data.
The PO instigated investigations internally and brought in 2nd Sight around 2014 - however on seeing the draft 2nd Sight report they sacked the investigators as it was deemed that it would bring the PO into disrepute - Paula Vennels was involved at this stage.
Even after the court case of 2019 the PO has spent more on lawyers than they have paid out in reparations to 109 people who have won their appeals against the charges levelled by the PO/CPS & Procurator Fiscal.
The Lord Advocate, Chief Prosecutor in Scotland, was made aware by the Procurator Fiscal Staff that there were shortcomings in the PO evidence in Horizon prosecutions. There were no more cases after 2014 in Scotland.
The horrendous part of this was that the Lord Advocate did not order re- investigations in Horizon Fraud trials from 1999 to 2015 .
Of the roughly 100 Horizon cases in Scotland only 5/6 have been exonerated - they are all older and at least 1 had died before the guilty verdict was quashed.
I have followed the PO scandal since it was first aired in 2009 by Computer Weekly - it was bad in 2009 and every year since the Post Office have been exposed as thoroughly corrupt from the top down.
Looks like the Home Office will have many new prisoners in the future - perjury in courts and to government committees, malicious prosecution, extorting money from innocent SPM ...........
This scandal will run for many more years even after the UK Government eventually pay out the 900+SPM
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