The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) has formally sent its first appeal against a Post Office Capture user's conviction to the Court of Appeal, months after deciding to do it.
The appeal concerns the case of Patricia Owen, who died in 2003. She pleaded not guilty to stealing £6,000 but was found guilty in 1998 and sentenced to six months' imprisonment, suspended for two years, at Canterbury Crown Court.
In July this year it emerged that the CCRC had decided to refer Owen's case to appeal, but only did so yesterday (October 15).
At the same time, the statutory body said four appeals against the convictions of former Capture users would not be transferred because the CCRC's statutory criterion for referral had not been met.
“Unlike Ms Owen's case, four of these cases were determined by a three-member committee so as not to create a realistic possibility of the conviction being overturned,” the CCRC said.
Of the months it took for Owen's case to be formally referred, the CCRC said: “There is always a period of time between the committee's decision and the actual referral of the case to the Court of Appeal.”
Owen's lawyer Neil Hudgell, of Hudgell Solicitors, said the formal transfer of her case and the new evidence could help other former Capture users clear their names.
The Capture system, which preceded the Fujitsu Horizon system, was used in post offices in the 1990s to replace paper accounting. As with the controversial Horizon system in the center Scandal at the post officewhich resulted in subpostmasters being blamed for unexplained losses, some Capture users were prosecuted for financial crimes.
Controversy over takeover appeared in January last year after the ITV drama Mr Bates v Post Office told the stories of subpostmasters affected by the Horizon system.
That same month, Kevan Jones, then a Member of Parliament who now sits in the House of Lords, highlighted evidence of injustice caused by losses during capture.
This led to a campaign and by December 2024 the government promised financial redress and justice for subpostmasters affected by Capture issues. This follows an independent investigation by forensic experts Kroll, which found that there was a “reasonable probability” Post Office Capture software caused accounting losses.
Hudgell said the formal transfer of Owen's appeal “is a really important moment for those people impacted by Capture as it is the first conviction to be formally referred to the Court of Appeal.
“It is important that this is done with evidence that clearly shows that people were prosecuted without all the facts and evidence that would likely have prevented them from being convicted.”
He added: “The first step now is to take Ms Owen's case to the Court of Appeal and have her conviction overturned. In light of the new evidence we now have to provide, we hope we can open the door for all others who have been prosecuted using seizure evidence to clear their names, as happened with Horizon.”
Dame Vera Baird CC, chair of the CCRC, said: “We have over 30 applications for transfer of Post Office convictions dating back to pre-Horizon and the majority of these cases are under active investigation. “Some of these very old cases have missing documents, dates or other information.
“We have exercised our powers under section 17 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1995 to require the Post Office to provide all material they have on each case and they will provide it where available.”
Computer weekly first exposed the scandal in 2009revealing the stories of seven subpostmasters and the problems they faced due to Horizon accounting software.
Read: Everything you need to know about the Post Office scandal.
