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Criminal review board 'sorry' for failing Andrew Malkinson | Criminal review board 'sorry' for failing Andrew Malkinson |
(32 minutes later) | |
Andrew Malkinson said the apology was "too little, too late" | |
The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) has offered an "unreserved apology" to an innocent man who spent 17 years in prison. | The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) has offered an "unreserved apology" to an innocent man who spent 17 years in prison. |
Andrew Malkinson was wrongly convicted of raping a woman in Salford in 2003 and remained in prison until he was exonerated by DNA testing. | |
CCRC chairwoman Helen Pitcher said she was "deeply sorry" for "failing" Mr Malkinson. | CCRC chairwoman Helen Pitcher said she was "deeply sorry" for "failing" Mr Malkinson. |
In response, he criticised her for waiting until the conclusion of an independent review before offering the apology, calling it "too little, too late". | |
Mr Malkinson was formally acquitted in July 2023 but it later emerged that DNA implicating another suspect was discovered four years after he was jailed. | |
He had written to the CCRC asking it to refer his case to the Court of Appeal in 2009, but the commission refused to do so. | |
It refused to order further forensic testing in 2012 and declined a second application in 2020. | |
Mr Malkinson said: "It is hard for me to see sincerity in an apology after all this time - when you are truly sorry for what you have done, you respond immediately and instinctively, it wells up in you." | |
Ms Pitcher, however, said: "For me, offering a genuine apology required a clear understanding of the circumstances in which the commission failed Mr Malkinson. We now have that." | |
The victim of the rape, a 33-year-old mother of two, had been followed by a man and throttled unconscious as she walked in the Little Hulton area of Salford in July 2003. | |
Mr Malkinson, who had been working in the area as a security guard, was sentenced to life in prison for the attack the following year - with reports from the time describing how he shouted out "protesting his innocence" from the dock. | |
Related Topics | |
Salford |