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Defence lawyers say system is facing a crisis as over 1,600 cases have collapsed due to omission of key evidence

The law promises females better protection from violent men. But freeing the murderer is troubling

By Melanie Newman17 May 2021 Janet Skinner was 35 and a divorced mother of two teenage children in 2007 when she was accused of stealing almost £60,000 from the busy post office she ran on a council estate in Hull. Last month she was one of 39 former postmasters cleared of similar offences after it emerged the Post Office had failed to disclose that a defective computer system installed at their branches was generating ‘phantom’ transactions. Initially charged with theft, Skinner pleaded guilty to false accounting despite knowing she had not taken the money. Her lawyer had advised this a...

By Melanie Newman17 May 2021 Janet Skinner was 35 and a divorced mother of two teenage children in 2007 when she was accused of stealing almost £60,000 from the busy post office she ran on a council estate in Hull. Last month she was one of 39 former postmasters cleared of similar offences after it emerged the Post Office had failed to disclose that a defective computer system installed at their branches was generating ‘phantom’ transactions. Initially charged with theft, Skinner pleaded guilty to false accounting despite knowing she had not taken the money. Her lawyer had advised this a...

The low down The ‘can do’ attitude lawyers and the justice system assumed when Covid-19 struck has seen the overnight arrival of technologies that have been talked about for years. The criminal justice system has experienced a dramatic increase in the use of remote hearings and solicitors attending police station interviews virtually. While it is unlikely that things will go back to how they were in 2019, decades of underspending on criminal justice is leaving defence lawyers fearful that cost and convenience and not the interests of clients will determine which changes are permanent. Not...