"I was kidnapped by the state" - Innocent man who spent 17 years in jail for a rape he didn't commit slams justice system that failed him
26.07.2023 - 19:53
/ manchestereveningnews.co.uk
An innocent man who spent 17 years behind bars for a rape he didn't commit has said he was 'kidnapped by the state' after appeal court judges quashed his conviction.
Andrew Malkinson, 57, always denied carrying out the violent attack on a woman by the M61 motorway in Little Hulton, Salford, in July 2003. The following year he was jailed for life with a minimum term of seven years, but remained in prison for a further 10 because he maintained he was innocent.
He was convicted solely because of identification evidence - the victim picked him out in an identity procedure as did two other alleged eye-witnesses. But new DNA evidence implicated another man.
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His case was referred to the Court of Appeal in January by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which investigates potential miscarriages of justice, after new DNA evidence was discovered. This afternoon three top judges sitting at the Court of Appeal quashed his rape conviction.
Mr Justice Holroyd, leading a panel of three senior judges, said: "Having considered for ourselves the new evidence and its effect, we have no doubt that the new evidence shows these convictions to be unsafe. Accordingly, we formally receive the new scientific evidence and fresh evidence and we allow this appeal against conviction in relation to those offences and we quash those convictions."
The judges said they would at a later date publish their decisions on arguments that the trial was unfair, including courtroom allegations the two witnesses who purported to corroborate the woman's identification were unreliable. They were a couple with previous convictions said to have been withheld from