Moorhead, Richard; Nokes, Karen; Helm, Rebecca; (2023) Independent Review, Miscarriages of Justice, and Computer Evidence: Brian Altman KC’s General Review and the Post Office Scandal. Digital Evidence and Electronic Signature Law Review , 20 pp. 96-119.

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Abstract

The Altman General Review (General Review)2links the discovery that the Post Office Limited (PO) had prosecuted sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses on the basis of partial, unreliable evidence; the Clarke Advice (Simon Clarke, Barrister);3the subsequent Swift Review (Jonathan Swift KC); and the conduct of the Bates litigation and the Hamilton appeals.4The Altman General Review is an important, perhaps central, document in the PO Scandal. It was a review prompted by the discovery of unreliable expert evidence on an unreliable software system in 2013 that had been relied on to prosecute hundreds of sub-postmasters. That discovery led to a review of prosecutions that had been conducted for the Post Office by Cartwright King. This review (the CK Sift) was also conducted by Cartwright King. Brian Altman was instructed to conduct a review of that review (the General Review).In spite of that discovery, the Post Office continued to deny, including to Parliament in 2015, that there was any evidence of miscarriages of justice until appearing before the Court of Appeal in 2020/21. Those denials were founded in significant part on Altman’s and related work. He told the PO the review of prosecutions being conducted by their solicitors, Cartwright King, was fundamentally sound; this paper looks at the quality of the judgments arrived at to come to that conclusion.

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