A shoplifter jailed for stealing a loaf of bread and a packet of ham worth just £3 has had her sentence overturned.

Lynsey Michelle Ogni, 35, committed the petty food theft at the Curzon Street Spar shop, in Maryport, on August 13.

She was brought before a magistrates’ court and sent straight to prison on September 2.

District Judge Gerald Chalk heard on that occasion how Spar workers handed police CCTV pictures of Ogni taking the items.

Officers later found the packet of ham and the jacket she was wearing in the footage at her Crosby

Street home in the town.

At the time she committed that theft, Ogni was subject to a suspended prison term, imposed in April, for other offences.

District Judge Chalk decided to activate 80 days of that sentence, and gave her an extra 14 days for the theft from Spar.

But Ogni lodged an appeal against District Judge Chalk’s sentence, claiming it was too harsh. This was heard – and upheld – at Carlisle Crown Court on Friday by Judge Peter Hughes QC, sitting with a magistrate.

During the appeal hearing it emerged that two days before Ogni was sent to prison she had appeared at the crown court , on August 31 .

Having admitted the illegal possession of heroin and methadone, she was given a suspended eight-month prison sentence by Judge Barbara Forrester. In addition, Ogni was also made subject to the strict terms of a community order which was tailored to help her.

Having been told of the complicated chronology, Judge Hughes said he and his colleague found the situation “concerning”.

“We consider that the likelihood is that Judge Forrester did not know of the breach of the (earlier) suspended sentence by the matter of the shop-lifting offence, and that Judge Chalk did not know of the decision that Judge Forrester had taken two days earlier.

“It seems to us remarkable, given the course that Judge Forrester had taken, that another judge would then have frustrated the intention of that sentence simply because of the commission of a minor offence of shoplifting £3 worth of food.”

Judge Hughes concluded: “Because of that we consider the appropriate course is to quash the sentence of Judge Chalk.”

No action was taken on the breach of the suspended sentence imposed in April. Ogni was instead given a three-month conditional discharge.

However, her barrister, Brendan Burke, explained that the time spent in prison had come at a cost.

“She has, in the meantime, lost her tenancy as well, unhappily,” he said.