R v Simon Lawrence Edgecombe

THE VICE PRESIDENT: This is a renewed application for leave to appeal against conviction by Mr Simon Edgecombe, following refusal by the single judge.

In order to be able to pursue an appeal, Mr Edgecombe would require an extension of time of something like 42 years. He was convicted of theft on 14 March 1983 in the Crown Court at Maidstone. He was sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment. Mr Edgecombe's written reasons to explain the delay in seeking leave to appeal against that conviction set out some of the things which have happened to him over the years. First of all he says that he was dissuaded from lodging an application for leave to appeal by a prison officer during the sentence that he served. Then he says that on his release from prison he found himself in such a state that he was struggling to exist, let alone try to prove his innocence. He had lost his home, he had no money and he had lost contact with his family. Next, he says that over the intervening years he made many enquiries with the Post Office, who had prosecuted this case, but he received no assistance from them in answer to those requests. He attempted to secure legal advice and representation but was unsuccessful. That culminated in a further contact by him with the Post Office in 2016 or 2017 when again they were unwilling to engage with him at all.

He says that it was only when the Horizon scandal permeated the public consciousness that he found the courage and resolve to take up the cajoles once more, to attempt, as he puts it, to clear his name and obtain justice. Finally, he says that he was able to receive some information about what had happened to him by a Freedom of Information Request to the Kent Police which resulted in some further information in the relatively recent past.

The proper approach to requests for extensions of time was explained in a judgment given on behalf of the court by Pitchford LJ in Thorsby [2015] EWCA Crim 1. He said:

There is in the cases a qualification to that general statement of principle which applies when the passage of time has effectively prevented any reliable examination of the merits of the case which resulted in the conviction or of the grounds of challenge to that conviction which are now advanced. Decisions on that issue include Hunter [2015] EWCA Crim 631; R v Gabbana [2020] EWCA Crim 1473 and R v Roe (Philip) [2023] EWCA Crim 316.

In this case there are no case papers or transcripts of any kind owing to the passage of time. The only information we have comes from Mr Edgecombe's recollection. We have no reason to suppose that Mr Edgecombe is not doing his best accurately to recall the content of the prosecution case and the events of the trial but after the passage of time to which we have referred that recollection, even if genuinely advanced, must inevitably be regarded as unreliable.

What he says is that the allegation of theft which was advanced by the Post Office in this private prosecution related to a van which he procured on behalf of the sub-postmaster. Payment for the van was apparently made by cash out of the till. There was another defendant, a Ms Hoskins, who was employed to work at the sub-post office. There seems to have been some uncertainty about precisely who she was employed by but she was certainly employed to work at the sub-post office. Mr Edgecombe, the applicant, was not employed to work at the sub-post office; he was involved only because he was asked to source, repair and supply a van suitable for cash and carry use by Mr Masrani. Mrs Masrani (Mr Masrani's wife) was the person who held the licence from the Post Office to operate this sub-post office.

It appears to have been common ground that a sum of money which according to records might have been expected to be in the till, was not in fact there. A deficiency of a little over £1,000 was identified on audit. Mr Edgecombe's recollection is that the amount of money which was necessary to pay to him in return for the van was £750 or £850 or so. Although therefore there was a dispute about how much money was missing from the till, it was agreed that some money was.

In 1983 this sub-post office did not use any form of digital accounting system. Mr Edgecombe's case was not therefore a case which involves the level of confidence, or lack of it, which the court may feel in Post Office accounting records principally concerned in the Horizon system but in other more recent cases referred to this court by the CCRC in an earlier system called "capture". Neither of those systems was involved in the case against Mr Edgecombe. The book-keeping, so far as he recalls it, appears to have been rudimentary to say the least. Apparently, Ms Hoskins wrote the amount of the payment that she made on the reverse of a desk blotter which was kept behind the Post Office counter. There was also a duplicate invoice book which contained documentary evidence relating to the sale of the van. That invoice book had belonged to the applicant himself. He recalls that he provided it to investigators when the investigation started, expecting that they would return it to him, but they did not. The blotter, he says, was taken away by Post Office investigators and was not seen again.

Apparently Mr Masrani and Mrs Masrani did not give evidence at the trial. There was no accounting evidence and, says Mr Edgecombe, no witnesses were called by the prosecution. The applicant recalls that the conviction was returned by a majority and he says that when it became clear that the jury was unable to reach a unanimous decision, the judge said that they should retire again, and words along these lines:

The third, fourth and sixth grounds of appeal again suffer from the fundamental difficulty that the court has no way of evaluating them by reference to any surviving documentation or transcripts or any other evidence. All that there is, is Mr Edgecombe's recollection. That unsatisfactory state of affairs is the result of the passage of time. The passage of time has occurred because he has not pursued his appeal for over 40 years. As we have said, it is impossible for a Court of Appeal to review the safety of a conviction in circumstances such as this.

So far as the comments attributed to the trial judge are concerned, something of the same problem arises. The court when evaluating directions given by a judge to a jury in a trial looks at the transcript or listens to the recording, if necessary. It never relies solely upon the recollection of any single individual, still less would it ever do so 40 years after the event.

We are sure that Mr Edgecombe has a clear recollection of what must be a single and very memorable event in his life. It is clear to us that his conviction has troubled him for decades. None of that, however, means that his recollection is actually reliable. What we do know is that there was no appeal at the time, that he was represented at the trial (as was his co-defendant) and that no complaint was made about any inappropriate comments by the judge by any of the counsel involved in the case over 40 years ago. That is something which leads us to find that it is unlikely that any comments were made by the judge of which any proper complaint could be made. Certainly, there is no basis upon which we could conclude that he did make any inappropriate comment such as that which is described.

The single judge reached the same conclusions that we have. He set out his conclusions firmly and very clearly and Mr Edgecombe has had the benefit of seeing that. Since the single judge's decision some further submissions have been made which, in our judgment, do not address the fundamental problem here.

Because of the circumstances of this application, we should make it clear that Mr Edgecombe's case has got nothing to do with any computer accounting system. It was all about a blotter and a duplicate invoice book - old-fashioned accounting methods. In these circumstances it would be entirely wrong, in our judgment, for the extension of time to be granted. As Pitchford LJ said, the court will always look at the underlying merits to determine whether there is an arguable appeal so that applying the time limits might cause injustice. Here, we have looked at the merits of the proposed appeal and what we know about what happened, resulting in the conviction. As we have said, in the absence of any reliable material at all about any of that, we are unable to conclude that this appeal has any arguable prospects of success. In those circumstances it would be quite wrong to extend time for 42 years to enable it to be pursued. We would observe that doing that would simply extend the period of time during which Mr Edgecombe has unjustified hope that his conviction might be quashed: it will not be.