Judges who jailed Post Office branch managers should not be blamed for the Horizon IT scandal, the Lady Chief Justice has insisted.
Around 4,000 subpostmasters were accused of financial wrongdoing between 1999 and 2015, leading to 700 criminal convictions and 236 people being sent to prison.
The prosecutions were mounted by the Post Office, based on flawed data from the Fujitsu-developed Horizon IT system, in what is now considered one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British legal history.
The Lady Chief Justice, Lady Carr of Walton-on-the-Hill, said on Tuesday that she does not believe the judges who oversaw the criminal cases are to blame.
"I would resist any suggestion there’s any basis for implicating the judiciary in any of the very egregious failures that appear to have gone on in terms of the prosecution of these subpostmasters, for whom we all feel enormous empathy where they have been wrongly convicted”, she said.
Lady Carr, speaking at her first press conference since assuming the role of Lady Chief Justice, said crown court judges act independently rather than looking for trends across the criminal justice system.
And she hailed the 2019 High Court judgment of Mr Justice Fraser - ruling in favour of subpostmasters led by Alan Bates in a civil case against the Post Office - as a “heroic piece of work”.
He found that the Horizon IT system, which Post Office had long insisted could be relied on for accountancy data, contained “bugs, errors and defects”. He also concluded there had been a culture of secrecy at the Post Office.
Lady Carr commented: "It’s that judgment which forms the platform for all these convictions to be quashed.
"It is the fresh evidence, it is the basis of the convictions being overturned.
"He delivered that judgment in record time with the amount of evidence and issues he had to deal with."
Following the broadcast of a powerful ITV drama on the scandal, the government promised to take action and pledged to bring forward legislation which would fast-track the overturning of wrongful convictions against Post Office branch managers.
Lady Carr said she is still waiting for details of the proposed law, but said she believes decisions about criminal convictions rest with the courts.
“If I had to speak out, I will”, she vowed.
"The Rule of Law is clearly engaged, it is for the courts to make judicial decisions, these are court-ordered convictions, and at any time the Rule of Law has to be confronted in this context then I will confront it."
