A former post office branch operator who suffered in silence and endured humiliation after being convicted of fraud based on evidence from the faulty Horizon IT system has had her conviction quashed by the court of appeal.
Kathleen Crane was handed a 12-month community order and ordered to repay more than £18,000 she was accused of taking from her branch in Eastbourne, East Sussex, when she was sentenced in 2010.
She was one of hundreds of branch owner-operators convicted after the Post Office’s defective Horizon accounting system – provided by the IT company Fujitsu – produced figures that suggested money was missing.
At a hearing in London on Thursday, three appeal court judges ruled there was “no doubt” Crane’s conviction was unsafe, adding that she was “kept in ignorance” of Horizon’s defects.
Delivering the judgment, Lord Justice Holroyde said: “We have no doubt that her prosecution was an abuse of process. Nor do we have any doubt that her conviction is unsafe.”
Crane, 68, was at the hearing, and wept as her conviction was quashed.
Speaking to ITV outside the Royal Courts of Justice after the decision, Crane said her “horrible” experience was “over now” and urged others affected by the scandal to come forward. “If you’re innocent, you should have your conviction quashed,” she said.
Her daughters Katy and Lucy Crane joined her in court. The former told reporters: “I actually don’t know how they [the Post Office] sleep at night. I absolutely think someone should serve some jail time. I think somebody needs to be held to account.”
Crane’s case is the first of many expected to reach the court of appeal as a result of the Post Office’s own case review, with the company contacting her last June to say it believed there had been a miscarriage of justice.
With the support of her daughter Katy, Crane lodged an appeal on 10 January. The Post Office did not resist.
Flora Page, representing Crane in court, said her client had “suffered in silence” since her “appalling experience”, adding that a “fraud she had not committed brought its own humiliation”.
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A 2010 audit of the post office Crane ran found a financial shortfall. After she voluntarily attended an interview with Post Office investigators, Crane was accused of defrauding the company of nearly £19,000.
She told investigators she had been aware of inexplicable shortfalls since 2008, and asked for them to be investigated, but no action was taken. She later pleaded guilty to fraud by false representation after legal advice made her feel that the Horizon system was infallible.
Also on Thursday, David Teale, a former procurator fiscal, gave evidence to the Horizon IT inquiry. Teale was involved in the prosecution of William Quarm, who pleaded guilty to embezzling money in 2010 to try to avoid going to prison over the case. He died in 2012, never knowing he would eventually be exonerated.
