Horizon scandal: post office operator cleared after years of ‘humiliation’

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.

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.”