Southwark Crown Court has on Friday formally acquitted former sub-postmistress Nalini Joshi in a Horizon case referred by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC).
Post Office, which acted as prosecutor in the case from 2001, said it did not contest the appeal.
The CCRC in June referred Joshi’s case to the Crown Court due to concerns about the Horizon computer system.
“Post Office is sincerely sorry for the failures of the past and we are taking determined action to right the wrongs suffered by those affected,” a Post Office spokesperson said.
“Our priority is to ensure that there is meaningful compensation for victims and that such events can never happen again.”
Joshi pleaded guilty to four counts of false accounting at Fenland Magistrates’ Court on 13 November 2001 and was sentenced to a community punishment order consisting of 120 hours unpaid work, costs of £1163.25 and compensation to the Post Office of £6191.88.
She applied to the CCRC in June 2021 after the Court of Appeal quashed 39 Post Office convictions in April that year. Joshi could not appeal to the Crown Court in the usual way because she pleaded guilty in the magistrates’ court.
In its decision, the CCRC said the reliability of data from the Horizon computer system was essential to the case against Joshi. In light of what is now known about Horizon, the CCRC has concluded that there is a real possibility that the Crown Court will set aside her guilty plea and stay proceedings as an abuse of process.
To date, there have now been 75 historical convictions overturned in Horizon cases following the High Court judgment in December 2019. In addition, there has been one conviction overturned in a conceded appeal in which the Crown Prosecution Service was the respondent
Post Office has identified a total of 706 historical convictions in cases it prosecuted between 1999 and 2015 in which Horizon computer evidence might have featured, and a total of 117 appeals have been completed by the courts.
