Two men convicted of stealing mailbags in London 50 years ago have had their convictions quashed by the Court of Appeal, after the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) found a real possibility they were unsafe because of the role of a corrupt British Transport Police officer.
Christopher Poulter and Kevin Biggs were convicted of the theft of 13 mailbags and their contents at Inner London Crown Court in April 1976, alongside their co-defendant Stephen Simmons. Mr Poulter was given a 12-month prison sentence, while Mr Biggs was sentenced to borstal training.
The convictions were referred to the Court of Appeal by the CCRC, which concluded they may have been unsafe because of the role played in the case by discredited officer Derek Ridgewell, then a detective sergeant with British Transport Police.
In the 1970s, DS Ridgewell was involved in a series of arrests and convictions in which it was later discovered he had framed innocent people — particularly young black men — to cover his own criminality. In 1980 he was jailed for seven years after stealing more than £1 million worth of goods in transit. He died in prison two years later.
The CCRC has now referred 15 cases involving Ridgewell to the Court of Appeal. Mr Simmons — the co-defendant in this case — was the first of them to be referred.
Remarkably, neither Mr Poulter nor Mr Biggs had ever appealed against their convictions, having been advised by lawyers that they had no grounds to do so. Mr Poulter only applied to the CCRC last November, after British Transport Police spoke to him as part of its own live investigation into Ridgewell’s misconduct. The Commission received an application on behalf of Mr Biggs — who died in 2004 — in February 2026.
Dame Vera Baird KC, chair of the CCRC, said: “It is absolutely right that that these men have had their convictions quashed by the court today.”
“Anyone else who believes they have been convicted through the actions of Derek Ridgewell should apply to us so we can investigate whether we can also refer your case to the courts,” she added.
The CCRC is the independent body set up under the Criminal Appeal Act 1995 to review suspected miscarriages of criminal justice in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Based in Birmingham and funded by the Ministry of Justice, it received more than 1,800 applications for review last year and has referred more than 900 cases to the appeal courts since it began work in 1997. Once a case is referred, it is for the appeal court to decide whether the conviction is unsafe.
The quashing of the convictions casts the spotlight once again on London’s courts, which are under scrutiny from all sides. The Met’s commissioner recently attacked the courts over a bail decision, while other recent cases heard in the capital’s courts include the sentencing of Zafer Dogan over AI-generated explicit images.
