The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) has referred a second subpostmaster appeal against a conviction based on the Post Office’s faulty Capture system to the Court of Appeal.
A theft and false accounting conviction of a Post Office Capture user from 1997 joins a theft conviction from 1998 in the Court of Appeal.
The latest referral is related to the prosecution of former subpostmaster Steve Marston, who was a subpostmaster in Bury, Lancashire. He was convicted in 1997, for theft and false accounting, following an unexplained shortfall of nearly £80,000. He said he had never had any problems using the paper-based accounting system, but that changed when his branch, which he ran from 1973, began using the Capture system.
Marston was informed this morning (27 March) that his appeal would be referred to the appeal court. The CCRC was unavailable for comment when this article was published.
In October 2025, an appeal against a 1998 conviction of Patricia Owen, who died in 2003, was the first Capture case to be referred to the Court of Appeal. She pleaded not guilty to the theft of £6,000, but was convicted and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment, suspended for two years, at Canterbury Crown Court.
Marston told Computer Weekly: “It feels like a massive weight has been lifted. We’ve been waiting for nearly 18 months to hear this, and it’s been extremely hard on the family, as well as myself.
“Obviously, this is a massive step forward, but there’s still a hell of a long way to go yet,” he added.
More waiting
There are currently about 30 prosecutions under review by the CCRC. Unlike convictions based on the Horizon system, which were overturned en masse through legislation, those based on Capture have to go through the CCRC.
The Post Office said it is treating each appeal on a case-by-case basis.
Capture, which predates Fujitsu’s Horizon system, was used in Post Office branches in the 1990s to replace paper-based accounting. Like with the controversial Horizon system at the centre of the Post Office scandal, which saw subpostmasters blamed for unexplained losses, some Capture users were prosecuted for financial crimes.
The controversy over Capture emerged in January 2024, after ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office told the stories of subpostmasters who had suffered at the hands of the Horizon system.
In the same month, Kevan Jones, an MP at the time who now sits in the House of Lords, highlighted evidence of injustices triggered by Capture losses.
This led to a campaign and, by December 2024, the government promised financial redress and justice for subpostmasters affected by Capture problems. This followed an independent investigation by forensic experts at Kroll, which found there was a “reasonable likelihood” the Post Office Capture software caused accounting losses.
Marston has been a central figure in the campaign for justice for former Capture users.
Solicitor Neil Hudgell of Hudgell Solicitors, which represents many former Capture users appealing convictions, said he is “delighted with the news”.
“Steve is a very decent man, who deserves an early end to this process,” he said. “We now wait to hear how the Post Office responds.”
Calls for ‘urgent legislation’
MPs recently called for “urgent legislation” to overturn Post Office convictions based on its Capture software, and warned that “unsafe” convictions based on other pre-Horizon systems are yet to be unearthed.
In its latest report, the business and trade select committee highlighted the potential that there are miscarriages of justice for subpostmasters still to be discovered, adding that there is evidence the Ministry of Justice is “wrongly judging eligibility” of subpostmasters that could appeal against convictions.
Computer Weekly first exposed the scandal in 2009, revealing the stories of seven subpostmasters and the problems they suffered as a result of the Horizon system.
