UK launches independent inquiry into wrongful conviction case for which man served 17 years in prison – JURIST

Two top lawyers for the UK government, Lord Chancellor Alex Chalk and Attorney General Victoria Prentis, ordered Thursday an independent inquiry into the handling of a case in which a man was wrongfully imprisoned for over 17 years. The announcement comes less than a month after the Court of Appeals quashed the 2004 conviction of Andrew Malkinson in which DNA evidence revealed he was not responsible for the alleged crime.

In the Thursday statement, Chalk said:

The core function of our justice system is to convict the guilty and ensure the innocent walk free. Yet a man spent 17 years in prison for a crime he did not commit while a rapist remained on the loose. It is essential that lessons are learned in full.

The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and the Greater Manchester Police have all signaled their cooperation with the investigation, which will be led by a yet-to-be-announced senior legal figure in the UK. The investigation will coincide with an independent review by the Law Commission into the wider UK appeals process—including the CCRC, a statutory body responsible for investigating the alleged miscarriage of justice in cases spanning England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

An issues paper published by the Law Commission today provides an authoritative account of how the appeals system works in the UK. While it asks 18 broad questions, it makes no recommendations on how to improve the system for people like Malkinson.

The DNA evidence that eventually exonerated Malkinson first came to light in 2007, after police discovered another man’s DNA on the victim’s clothing. And yet, Malkinson remained in prison on rape charges for another 13 years. It was only after further pushing from legal advocacy group APPEAL that the evidence was finally brought before the courts.

One of the barristers that worked on Malkinson’s defense team, Maximilian Hardy, told JURIST:

Andrew Malkinson has been cheated of 17 years of his liberty and 20 years of his life. This ruling demonstrates that this was not just a DNA case but a wrongful conviction brought about by the withholding of information known to be police but not to the defence. He continues to try and establish the circumstances that led to his wrongful conviction.

After his release, Malkinson said, “The evidence needed to overturn my conviction has been sitting in police files for the past two decades. Yet the CCRC did not bother to look, and it fell to the small charity APPEAL to bring it to light.” He continued, “I want politicians to give people seeking to prove their innocence a right to access the evidence on their case—since the police and CCRC have proved they cannot be trusted.”