Trevor Francis’ son cleared of burgling home of former footballer

Jurors at Warwick Crown Court took little more than an hour to find James Francis not guilty of a single count of burglary following a four-day trial.

In a statement issued after the verdict, the 26-year-old and his family said he had been through “two years of hell” because the Crown Prosecution Service withheld information about the case.

Francis, from Solihull, told the court on Wednesday he had visited Hendrie’s £1.6m home in Rowington, Warwickshire, in May 2011 to assess the cost of cleaning the property.

The cleaning company supervisor was initially questioned about the alleged break-in in August 2011 after his fingerpints were found in a one-bedroom cottage attached to Hendrie’s mansion.

Hendrie and his wife Emma alleged that six souvenir football shirts, a Vertu mobile phone, sunglasses, ladies’ footwear, a set of golf clubs, an earring and a designer bag were taken from the cottage between July 1 and August 2, 2011.

The trial was told Hendrie’s wife, Emma, submitted an insurance claim form following the burglary which Francis’s counsel described as containing “bare-faced” lies.

The form, in which it was falsely stated that Mr Hendrie had no previous convictions, was not given to defence lawyers until part-way through this week’s trial.

In a statement read out by defence solicitor Jim Crocker after the verdict, the Francis family questioned why the case had been brought before a jury.

Accusing the CPS of withholding information about the insurance claim from the defence, Mr Crocker added: “That documentation showed incontrovertibly that false information had been submitted to the Halifax in support of an insurance claim. The defence team had specifically requested these documents from the Crown Prosecution Service, but they had declined to produce them by asserting that they were not relevant.

“This resulted in two years of hell and worry for James and his family, not to speak of the incredible waste of public and private money and resources.”