Exeter University needs you
Professor Richard Moorhead will be known to some of you. He writes a well-regarded legal ethics blog (“Lawyer Watch”) and a free substack site dedicated to matters arising from the Post Office Horizon scandal.
He is also a member of the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board. In addition to this Prof Moorhead has been running various research projects looking into the Horizon scandal.
I have news of a new one. This is for any Subpostmaster, branch manager/assistant or Crown Office employee who was threatened with legal action or sued/prosecuted by the Post Office.
You can read how to get involved, what it entails (essentially, an hour of your time) and how the data will be used in this blog post here.
I have no connection to this project, but I can vouch for the professionalism and expertise of Professor Moorhead and his team – and the care they put into their work.
If you do get involved and don’t mind telling me how it went – please get in touch with me through the usual channels (eg replying to this email!). All communication will be in confidence.
Noel’s book!
As mentioned in Friday’s newsletter, Noel and Sian Thomas’s memoir “The Stamp of Innocence” is now available as an ebook for just £8.99.
To mark this Rebecca Thomson and I did a podcast with Noel and his ghostwriter Aled Gwyn Jôb. You can listen to that here.
Podcast with Julie Etchingham
On Thursday ITV News broadcast a piece I made about Wendy Cousins and her family’s fight for justice. To accompany it I wrote a blog post on the ITV News website.
Now you can hear a podcast episode I recorded about the story with the ITV news anchor Julie Etchingham. I was very tired and might not have been as articulate as I should have been. You can judge for yourself here.
Incidentally, Wendy’s case recently featured in the Times as a piece by Tom Witherow. On the same day a Times leader discussed the wider implications in a leader article called “Justice Denied”.
The Great Post Office Trial eps 13 – 17 – BBC R4
On Monday next week you can hear the first of five new episodes of The Great Post Office Trial on BBC Radio 4. They will be broadcast daily across the week at 1.45pm then turned into an omnibus edition which will go out at the end of the week.
This is the first time since 2020 we have been given a run of episodes and the usual blood, sweat and tears has gone into their production. We’re acutely aware of the high standard of the initial episodes and we’ve tried to ensure the new episodes reach the same quality levels. I hope they do the requisite job.
Computer Weekly
Stephen Mason has written a very accessible opinion piece for Computer Weekly about the legal presumption of reliability in machines in the light of the Post Office scandal. You can read it here.
Inquiry restarts tomorrow
After a two week break, the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry returns tomorrow with a week of evidence from various Post Office investigators.
Stephen Bradshaw investigated Lisa Brennan, Noel Thomas, Janet Skinner, Joan Bailey, Lynette Hutchings, Grant Allen, Khayyam Ishaq, Angela Sefton and Anne Nield. Given how many of them have had their convictions quashed, his part in ruining peoples’ lives for no reason is pretty dismal. It’ll be interesting to see how he defends his record tomorrow afternoon.
A number of witnesses over the next three weeks were involved in the prosecution of Seema Misra, including Warwick Tatford (barrister), Dave Posnett (investigator) and Jarnail Singh (Post Office lawyer).
As Seema and her husband Davinder were the people responsible for bringing me into this story (see BBC Inside Out South’s 2011 investigation here) it will be an opportunity to try to get some sort of understanding as to what was going on on the other side of the fence at the time.
Keep well.
Nick