The Criminal Case Review Commission has referred its first case involving a pre-Horizon fraud prosecution by the Post Office.

Hundreds of individuals who were convicted on the basis of computer evidence from the Horizon IT system have already had their convictions quashed after it was found to be flawed. But an unknown number of people were convicted based on evidence from Capture, the predecessor to the Horizon accounting software.

The CCRC has now decided to refer its first such case to the Court of Appeal involving the late Patricia Owen. She pleaded not guilty to five counts of theft but was convicted in June 1998 at Canterbury Crown Court. She received a six-month jail term, suspended for two years.

Owen died in 2003 and her family made an application to the CCRC in January last year for her case to be reviewed.

Patricia Owen and her husband David

Patricia Owen and her husband David

Following a review of the case, the CCRC said it has made the decision to refer Owen’s conviction to the Court of Appeal on the grounds that her prosecution was an abuse of process. The court will decide whether to quash the conviction.

Owen was a manager at Broad Oak post office near Canterbury when the organisation switched to Capture to replace manual cash accounts. A standard check of the branch accounts showed an overclaim related to pension and allowance payments and her computer equipment was seized following an audit.

The Post Office alleged that Owen had manipulated the accounts produced by the Capture software system to inflate payment claims. She adamantly denied any wrongdoing.

It has emerged in recent years that an independent IT specialist, who had been commissioned to investigate Capture for Owen’s court case, was stood down from giving his evidence on the day of her trial by her own legal team.

In his report, Adrian Montagu had concluded that ‘bugs and errors existed in sufficiently significant numbers and seriousness’, meaning that ‘any evidence relying on or related to it must be regarded as very unsafe.’ As he was stood down, the report was never made public until recently.

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 end when she lost her Post Office. 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.'