A Horizon scandal sub-postmaster who pled guilty to embezzlement at Dunfermline Sheriff Court was subjected to an “oppressive prosecution” and entered his plea under “prejudicial circumstances”.
Colin Smith’s 2013 conviction was quashed earlier this year.
A report into the affair by senior judges in the Court of Criminal Appeal led by Lord Justice Clerk Lady Dorrian, was published on Tuesday and laid out the reasons prosecutors did not contest a number of cases which came before the court in the past year.
Mr Smith’s was one of six convictions considered by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), which investigates potential miscarriages of justices.
Since it started its probe, the Horizon scandal has been thrown into sharp relief by the television drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office.
It told how postmasters across the country were prosecuted for financial irregularities which were actually the fault of the Post Office’s computer systems.
Unfair conviction
Mr Smith pled guilty at Dunfermline in 2013 to embezzling £12,680.88 between March 2009 and July 2012 and was sentenced to 180 hours unpaid work.
The SCCRC has since established his complaints about financial discrepancies were dismissed and he was eventually prosecuted over the missing amounts.
He initially pled not guilty but to “put matters behind him”, he admitted taking money from the branch to keep the business afloat.
After the Horizon issue became clear, he appealed on the grounds “his plea was tendered under real error/misconception, that the prosecution was oppressive” and his human rights to a fair trial were breached.
The report, by Lady Dorrian, states: “He said he never considered Horizon might have been at fault, he could not explain how the shortfall occurred, and the account he provided was the only one that appeared consistent with the evidence before him.
“The SCCRC said that it did not consider his apparent admissions could be regarded as being given freely and consistently, but arose from the seemingly indisputable evidence with which he was faced.”
It states: “It was accepted that the appellant’s plea was tendered under prejudicial circumstances.”
Convictions quashed
In the judgement published on Tuesday, Lady Dorrian spoke of how the incorrect information generated by Horizon was the main source of evidence for the prosecution.
Scottish prosecutors believed that if the Horizon data was incorrect, the convictions could not be supported and had to be quashed.
Lady Dorrian also wrote where information generated by Horizon was not the main source of evidence, the Crown did not contest these appeals for “public interest reasons”.
Elsewhere in the report, Lady Dorrian said Post Office agents spoke to people suspected of stealing cash from the company at a time when they were experiencing distress.
Between 2000 and 2014, more than 700 sub-postmasters across the UK were falsely prosecuted based on information from the Post Office’s computerised accounting and sales system, Horizon.
Since then, many sub-postmasters in England have had their criminal convictions for theft, fraud and false accounting overturned.
The SCCRC referred the six Scottish cases – five who pled guilty and one found guilty after trial – to the appeal court in Scotland.
The SCCRC concluded five who pled guilty did so in circumstances that were, or could be said to be, clearly prejudicial.
It also concluded new information about Horizon, which has emerged since the sixth person’s trial, would have had a material bearing on a “critical issue” so that prosecution could be seen as oppressive.
All six have had their convictions quashed.
