Thirty-nine former subpostmasters who were wrongfully convicted of theft, fraud, and false accounting have had their names cleared on Friday by the Court of Appeal of England and Wales. The convictions were quashed because the subpostmasters did not stand a fair trial and that the prosecutions have been “an affront to the conscience of the court.” Judges said the only evidence these convictions were based on was data on Horizon—a defective accounting system introduced in 1999, and that “if the Horizon data was not reliable, there was no basis for the prosecution.” Lord Justice Timothy Holroyde said that the Post Office Limited (POL) “knew there were serious issues about the reliability of Horizon” and had a “clear duty to investigate” the system’s defects, but it “consistently asserted that Horizon was robust and reliable,” and “effectively steamrolled over any subpostmaster who sought to challenge its accuracy.” POL’s “failures of investigation and …