Independent Review, Miscarriages of Justice, and Computer Evidence: Brian Altman KC's General Review and the Post Office Scandal
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This is Working Paper 6 from The Evidence Based Justice Lab at the University of Exeter Law School, and
forms part of the Post Office Scandal Project, May 20231
Executive summary
The Altman General Review (General Review)2 links 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);3 the subsequent Swift Review (Jonathan Swift KC); and the conduct of the Bates litigation and the
Hamilton appeals.4 The 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.
This working paper analyses the Review.
We identify:
1. The limits of the evidence base showing it is not as stated a 'statistically significant' review of
prosecutions.
1 https://evidencebasediustice.exeter.ac.uk/current-resear ch-data/ost-office-project/ .
2 Brian Altman KC, Post Office Limited Horizon System General Review: Conduct of Prosecutions (15 October 2013) (General
Review), published in Documents Supplement, 20 Digital Evidence and Electronic Signature Law Review (2023), and available at
https://wwwostofficehorizni ncuiry~org uk/sites/defaut/fies/223-1/POLOOO651I20-
%20Reviewl20of%20PO120nrosecutionsn20by1206rianl20Altman%20KC%2015102013.rdf .
3 Simon Clarke, Barrister: Post Office Limited Advice on the use of expert evidence relating to the integrity of the Fujitsu Services
Limited Horizon System (15 July 2013); Simon Clarke, Barrister: Post Office Limited Horizon Disclosure The duty to record and
retain material (2 August 2013), both published in Documents Supplement, 20 Digital Evidence and Electronic Signature Law
Review (2023).
4 R. v Hamilton [2021] EWCA Crim 21, [2021] 1 WLUK 116, [2021] 1 Cr App R 17,
htt s: www.baili or ew cases WCA/Crim/2021/2.html
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International Licence
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