The man who spent sixteen years in jail for a rape that he did not commit has told the Guardian newspaper that fresh DNA testing for contested rape and murder convictions should have happened a decade ago when the science first became available, a move that would have spared him years in jail.
In 2004, Andy Malkinson was convicted by a 10-2 majority jury verdict of the July 2003 rape of a 33-year-old woman in Greater Manchester despite the absence of any forensic evidence linking him to the attack and notable discrepancies with the descriptions provided by eyewitnesses.
He then spent a decade longer in prison than he might have done had he admitted his guilt.He was finally released on a strict life licence in December 2020.
It was revealed that police and prosecutors knew forensic testing in 2007 had found a searchable male DNA profile on the female victim’s vest top that did not match Malkinson’s.
A senior CPS lawyer wrote in his notes: “If it is assumed that the saliva came from the offender, then it does not derive from Malkinson saying that “This is surprising because the area of the clothing that the saliva was recovered from was crime-specific.”
Yesterday The miscarriage of justice body for England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), announced it would be re-testing DNA in rape and murder cases from before 2016 that it has previously refused to refer to the court of appeal, and where DNA was a factor in identification.
Malkinson told the paper:
“This announcement is a tacit acknowledgment of what I have long known: that there will be many other innocent people like me who have been denied justice by the CCRC.
“The CCRC should have launched this review 10 years ago, when the new DNA profiling technology became available. Their failure to do so – along with a string of other failures in the way they handled my case – forced me to spend extra years in prison for a crime I did not commit.”
