Andrew Malkinson has called for those responsible for his wrongful conviction to be ‘held to account’ following the conviction of Paul Quinn at Manchester Crown Court on Friday. Quinn was unanimously found guilty of two counts of rape, one count of choking with intent and one count of grievous bodily harm 22 years after the wrong man was sent to prison.
‘I am content that the right result has finally been achieved for the victim, myself and the public,’ Malkinson said. ‘But the truth is that if the police had acted as they should have done, Paul Quinn could have been caught a long time ago. Instead, they wanted a quick conviction and I was a handy patsy forced to spend over 17 years in prison for his horrific crime. All those responsible for allowing this dangerous man to wander free whilst I was locked up must now be held to account.’
In an interview with Emily Dugan for The Sunday Times, Andrew Malkinson said: ‘This guy was a violent sexual offender who lived nearby. The police should have had him on their radar. But instead they insisted on going after me, even after the victim expressed doubts that it was me.’
Dugan reported that during Paul Quinn’s trial the victim revealed that when she saw Malkinson in court, she told a senior police officer that she was having doubts that he was her attacker. She was reassured it was just ‘trial nerves’. ‘I was very naive. I listened to what the police said,’ she said.
Greater Manchester Police released a statement: ‘We remain deeply sorry to the victim of this heinous attack, and Mr Malkinson, as the victim of a grave miscarriage of justice, for failing to bring the true attacker to justice during our original investigation.’
Five former GMP officers and one currently serving are under investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct. One of the former officers is also under criminal investigation for potential misconduct in public office and perverting the course of justice. Malkinson told The Sunday Times that he wanted ‘a fearless investigation and full answers now’. ‘These weren’t innocent mistakes. These weren’t just errors. The police chose to ignore evidence of my innocence. They chose to destroy and not disclose evidence. They chose to resist my efforts to clear my name. People should be held accountable for those choices.’
James Burley, who led APPEAL’s investigation into Malkinson’s wrongful conviction, welcomed Quinn’s conviction. ‘However, the grim reality is that Paul Quinn could have been caught years ago and certainly back in 2012, when his DNA was uploaded to the national database. By that point, the authorities had for some years had a searchable DNA profile recovered from the victim’s clothing which did not match Mr Malkinson. Yet neither Greater Manchester Police nor the Criminal Cases Review Commission bothered to arrange a further search of the database until 2022, when APPEAL had presented further DNA evidence supporting Mr Malkinson’s innocence.’
He continued: ‘As a consequence, Mr Malkinson spent a further eight years wrongly imprisoned whilst a violent offender lived freely. New periodic DNA searching rules must be brought in to ensure this situation is never repeated. To ensure a wrongful conviction like Mr Malkinson’s cannot happen again, we also call for serious consideration to be given to disallowing prosecutions based solely on unsupported eyewitness identification evidence in future. Certainly, juries need to be given an updated, strengthened warning about the pitfalls of eyewitness identification evidence. We also call for there to be full, routine transparency about the criminal histories of all prosecution witnesses – so that in future innocent people like Mr Malkinson are not denied the evidence they need to properly defend themselves, as he was.’
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