The Court of Appeal will hear the case of a former subpostmaster who was convicted for theft after experiencing unexplained losses, while using the Post Office’s Capture accounting software.
The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) has referred the conviction of Patricia Owens, who died in 2003, to the appeal court. She pleaded not guilty to the theft of £6,000, but in 1998 was convicted and sentenced to six months of imprisonment suspended for two years at Canterbury Crown Court.
Capture software, 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 were prosecuted for financial crimes.
Owen’s daughter, Juliet Shardlow, said: “This is the best news ever. I cried when I took the call from the CCRC.
“Being prosecuted and convicted destroyed my mum. Her world came to an end when she lost her Post Office,” she added.
“It was awful as she had dedicated her life to it. Her branch was a huge success until she had Capture installed, which she actually paid for herself to move from a traditional book system.
“Although we still have to go to court, an official body has now recognised that mum’s case deserves to be reconsidered, and that is so, so important to us,” said Shardlow.
CCRC review
A further 27 convictions of subpostmasters based on Capture losses are being reviewed by the CCRC, in what is another chapter of the Post Office scandal, described as the widest miscarriage of justice in modern British history.
The controversy over the Capture system emerged in January last year after ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office told the stories of subpostmasters who had suffered at the hands of the Horizon system.
It was the same month that Kevan Jones, an MP at the time who now sits in the House of Lords, highlighted evidence of injustices triggered by Capture losses.
This triggered a campaign and, by December, 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.
In May last year, the government was forced to introduce legislation to exonerate more than 900 subpostmasters who were convicted based on data from the faulty Horizon system.
The Horizon Compensation Advisory Board has since written to the secretary of state for justice urging the government to legislate to overturn convictions of subpostmasters based on the Capture system. The government said no.
‘Another landmark moment’
Solicitor Neil Hudgell, at Hudgell Solicitors, which represents Owen’s family, called the referral “another landmark moment in the continuing campaign to ensure all those who were wrongly prosecuted at the hands of the Post Office have their names cleared”.
“It is important to recognise that we await the Post Office’s position on this matter, and whether it will offer any evidence against Mrs Owen’s conviction being overturned, and then of course the Court of Appeal’s decision itself.”
Computer Weekly first exposed the scandal in 2009, revealing the stories of seven subpostmasters and the problems they suffered due to Horizon accounting software.
Read everything you need to know about the Post Office scandal.
