Judges set out why Banbury Road postmistress won Horizon appeal

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https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/20037 ... on-appeal/

There was no evidence independent of the Horizon system to prove that an Oxford sub-postmistress had stolen more than £50,000, a judge said.

Former Banbury Road Post Office worker Margaret White, then Miss Sowinska, was given a suspended prison sentence in 2007 after she admitted two counts of false accounting.

The Court of Appeal quashed her convictions two weeks ago after it was accepted that the criminal prosecution was totally reliant on the flawed Horizon accounting system.

However, in a newly-published judgement, the panel of three senior judges have gone into more detail about the appeal.

In the written judgement, delivered at the Royal Courts of Justice on Thursday, Lord Justice Holroyde said: “Post Office Limited accepts that this was an unexplained shortfall case and that evidence from Horizon was essential to Mrs White’s case.

“The reliability of Horizon records was in issue and there was no evidence to establish the shortfalls independently of Horizon.”

Mrs White was the manager of the Banbury Road Post Office, Oxford, when an audit of the branch in October 2005 uncovered an alleged shortfall of £51,039.72.

The Post Office later claimed she’d falsified the accounts in order to hide a further shortfall of £10,000.

She was interviewed under caution the following month, when she denied stealing money. She would use the Horizon system ‘until the figures balanced’ but said ‘if you can’t, you can’t’. Her interviewers did not ask would she’d do if she couldn’t balance the figures.

Mrs White denied theft and five counts of false accounting, but later admitted two charges of false accounting related to shortfalls of £28,150 and £10,000.

There was no evidence independent of the Horizon accounting system to support the allegation.Oxford Mail: File image of Post Office

Now-retired Oxford judge Christopher Compston sentenced her to 51 weeks’ imprisonment suspended for two years and ordered she carry out 150 hours of unpaid work and pay £500 towards the prosecution costs.

He told the defendant: “I am not saying you got away with £50,000, but on the other hand I am not saying you didn't.”

Mrs White appealed her convictions on the basis that it was unfair and an ‘affront to justice’. The Post Office did not oppose the appeal.

Lord Justice Holroyde said: “We have concluded that Mrs White’s convictions were unsafe.”

To date, more than 70 postmasters and postmistresses have had their convictions overturned on appeal – after Post Office bosses admitted that ‘missing’ funds were down to problems in the Horizon accounting software. They include, now, three former Oxford postmasters.

In February, Jason Beer QC, counsel to a public inquiry into the Horizon system, said the scandal could be ‘the worst miscarriage of justice in recent British legal history’.