Andrew Malkinson rape conviction quashed after 20 years

Planigale said:
In the UK system he will get compensation. Although I appreciate that does not really turn the clock back.

This again reinforces how careful one has to be about eye witness testimony, and how people over rely on eye witness testimony.
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Compensation capped at £1M for being imprisoned for more than 10 years if I remember correctly

And from which board and lodging has been removed.

It seems pretty low even compared to loss of earnings, let alone anything else.
 
Darat said:
Yep.

"Grave failures that must lie at the door of GMP that wholly undermined a fair trial"​

But of course no one will be held accountable. The police force is comprised of individuals, when something goes wrong it is through the actions of those individuals. Yet repeatedly we see it being presented as if the police force "itself" did these terrible things. Until individuals at all levels are held accountable for what "the police force" did i.e. what they did or did not do there is no reason to assume anything will change.
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Well said.

The fiction that organisations commit bad acts apart from the people who take the decisions is invidious.

Not just the police
 
The prosecution service should act as a quality control check of police investigations to ensure they have been fair and thorough and all evidence is disclosed. Instead, far too often they just take the evidence and narrative they have been given by the police and they run with it.

Whether that prosecution failure to check police work is due to a lack of resources, or because they have normalised police failings, or because they are under pressure to get convictions, as the police are to get detections, or a combination, there needs to be reform.
 
Woffinden article

It has been claimed that Mr. Malkinson was "forensically aware." This is the title of a long article by Bob Woffinden for the Justice Gap in 2016 (available via the Wayback Machine). This is a questionable way to explain the absence of evidence. This article was written prior to any DNA evidence coming to light.

Mr. Woffinden wrote, "At trial, the ‘forensically aware’ argument actually served a three-fold purpose for the prosecution: firstly, it enabled them to offer a viable explanation of the total lack of scientific evidence in circumstances in which any investigator (and many jurors) would have expected a great deal; secondly, it enabled them to present the placid and non-confrontational Malkinson as an experienced sexual predator (because he knew the importance of wearing a condom); and, thirdly, it deprived the defence of what would naturally have been the main plank of its case."

By listening to episode 4 of a series of podcasts by Emily Dugan, I found out a bit more about the DNA evidence. YSTR testing, which focuses on the Y-chromosome, was the new kind of testing done in this case. The police had questioned whether or not the victim had correctly remembered scratching her attacker's face. There were four areas tested, including the victim's left hand, and a possible saliva stain on her bra. They are called "crime specific areas." The DNA did not match the victim's boyfriend at the time.
 
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Nessie said:
The prosecution service should act as a quality control check of police investigations to ensure they have been fair and thorough and all evidence is disclosed. Instead, far too often they just take the evidence and narrative they have been given by the police and they run with it.

Whether that prosecution failure to check police work is due to a lack of resources, or because they have normalised police failings, or because they are under pressure to get convictions, as the police are to get detections, or a combination, there needs to be reform.
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Have you read the Secret Barrister books? The CPU is chronically under-resourced and overtrained.

My own involvement in the UK courts system is now many years in the past and I did not find the CPS staff, lay or legal, particularly competent or able, though sometimes quite dedicated.
Though the 'private' defense counsel weren't much better; I once tore a QC (as was) apart when she was cross-examining me.She utterly lacked the technical knowledge to understand my evidence and had obviously failed to consult someone to assist her.
 
Chris_Halkides said:
It has been claimed that Mr. Malkinson was "forensically aware." This is the title of a long article by Bob Woffinden for the Justice Gap in 2016 (available via the Wayback Machine). This is a questionable way to explain the absence of evidence. This article was written prior to any DNA evidence coming to light.

Mr. Woffinden wrote, "At trial, the ‘forensically aware’ argument actually served a three-fold purpose for the prosecution: firstly, it enabled them to offer a viable explanation of the total lack of scientific evidence in circumstances in which any investigator (and many jurors) would have expected a great deal; secondly, it enabled them to present the placid and non-confrontational Malkinson as an experienced sexual predator (because he knew the importance of wearing a condom); and, thirdly, it deprived the defence of what would naturally have been the main plank of its case."

By listening to episode 4 of a series of podcasts by Emily Dugan, I found out a bit more about the DNA evidence. YSTR testing, which focuses on the Y-chromosome, was the new kind of testing done in this case. The police had questioned whether or not the victim had correctly remembered scratching her attacker's face. There were four areas tested, including the victim's left hand, and a possible saliva stain on her bra. They are called "crime specific areas." The DNA did not match the victim's boyfriend at the time.
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I think this sort of argument is designed to play into something that I suspect still influences juries, that is the idea that 'well if the defendant was innocent they wouldn't be on trial'. Its the notion that if the police and CPS weren't sure they had the right man, and it is usually a man, they would have mounted a case to begin with. Its not universal and it may have been diluted given so many miscarriages of justice but I think its stll there.
 
strengths and weaknesses of the Woffinden article

Bob Woffinden's article for the Justice Gap in 2016 (still available via Wayback) has a number of strengths and one weakness. Toward the end Mr. Woffinden speculated that perhaps no attack took place at all. I think that his hypothesizing takes away from what is in other respects a useful article. His hypothesis does not easily account for the injury to the victim's nipple. Yet, this article came out before the DNA evidence was publicly known, to the best of my understanding. At some point the existence of a photograph of the victim's broken fingernail became public knowledge, contradicting a suggestion (which I believe arose from the prosecution but see below) that the victim had been mistaken about having scratched her attacker, but that might have happened only in the last few years. To sum up recent evidence both points strongly toward the reality of the attack and away from Mr. Malkinson as the perpetrator.

To his credit, he provided much information about the differences between the description she gave and Mr. Malkinson's actual appearance. He also discussed the failings of his solicitor and the judge, issues that I had not seen addressed in the other articles that I read. For example, the judge said, "She believed, undoubtedly, believed, that she scratched his face… Did she succeed in scratching his face in the way she clearly believed she did?" His solicitor had been imprisoned for fraud and struck off. His application for readmission, which was supported by the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, was not accepted, yet somehow he defended Mr. Malkinson. One wonders how effective he was, and whether or not he might have been inclined to pull his punches against the GMP.
EDT
From a link given above The Independent reported, "The barrister argued that police photographs, taken within hours of the attack but only disclosed in boxes of case documents years later, supported the victim’s evidence that she scratched her attacker and broke a nail on her left hand. Had they been disclosed before Mr Malkinson’s trial, he argued, they would have corrected the evidence of a doctor who wrongly said the broken nail was on the victim’s right hand, and the trial judge would therefore not have directed the jury that they could “exclude” the victim’s evidence about that if they were sure she was mistaken."

Mr. Woffinden regrettably passed on a few years ago. On the basis of his article, I would say that new evidence (the photograph and the DNA) would likely have swayed his opinion and that the portion of his article which cast doubt on the reality of the attack should be read in a forgiving light.

The Telegraph has a good article on the case. It is mostly focused on Mr. Malkinson's journey, but I also found this: "DNA retrieved from the uncovered clothing has been matched to a man on the national database."
 
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Beerina said:
In such an alternate universe, judges would be furious he had lied to get a reduced sentence, and that he should go back to jail for that.

This is based on just such a judge getting angry at the very idea an innocent person would succumb to arm twisting by threats of extra years, unless they confess. How dare they lie to the court that they did it!
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Not commonly understood is that claims of innocence are a powerful indicator of factual innocence.
Ask the clergy within prisons, and they will confirm this. A fascinating subject, I might start a thread at some point.
Of course if it became commonly understood it would create more complicated issues.
 
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Garrison said:
The judges have now rendered their formal opinion on the original trial:

Andrew Malkinson: Greater Manchester Police criticised over trial evidence

It's painfully obvious that the GMP conspired to pervert the course of justice but all we'll see is a bunch of platitudes while the perpetrators collect their pensions.
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Whether it was conspiracy or incompetence i do not know. The striking thing is that the court says the DNA evidence was unnecessary for a successful appeal. The true failure was in the police failing to disclose exculpatory evidence to the defence (as they are legally required to do).
 
Planigale said:
Whether it was conspiracy or incompetence i do not know. The striking thing is that the court says the DNA evidence was unnecessary for a successful appeal. The true failure was in the police failing to disclose exculpatory evidence to the defence (as they are legally required to do).
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If it was incompetence, it was so wilful that it was perverting the course of justice.
 
Journal article covering the case

Alec Samuels, "Andrew Malkinson: A miscarriage of justice?" Medicine, Science and the Law 2022, 62(2):95-96.
Abstract
In the case of Andrew Malkinson, a number of concerning or disturbing features about the conduct of the case by all involved have emerged. Application is therefore being made to the Criminal Cases Review Commission to reconsider and refer the case.

I found this via Wikipedia, but I have not yet read it.
 
high bar in appeals

The Daily Mail reported:
"She [Shadow culture secretary Lucy Powell and Manchester Central MP] told Sky News: 'This is a clear miscarriage of justice, the evidence was there, I think from my reading of the case...So I think there are serious lessons here for Greater Manchester Police. But I think there are also big lessons here for the way in which appeals get heard in this country.

'There's a very, very high bar, I've got experience with this in other cases as well. It's a very, very high bar that has to be met in order for an appeal to be heard. And that's why we see these miscarriages of justice go on for years and years and it's just not right and we need to have better checks and balances, not just in terms of that evidential gathering, but then in terms of how cases are prosecuted, and whether appeals can be heard.'"
 
saliva stain

Carrot Flower King said:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...years-before-andrew-malkinson-cleared-of-rape

How much wrongness and culpability on the part of the criminal justice system can you cram into one case?
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"Yet the discovery of another man’s DNA – which was not that of the victim’s then boyfriend – in a “crime specific” area of the victim’s clothes did not result in the CCRC referring his case for appeal. During the attack, the victim suffered a bite that partially severed her left nipple, meaning saliva staining on the vest above the left breast was considered “crime specific” by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS)."

This is an important paragraph of the article. Yes, clothing can pick up foreign DNA. Yet the implication from this article is that the DNA came from a area in which saliva was independently detected; in other words, this is not sub source DNA.
 
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BBC article about this today.

It seems the CCRC rejected the idea of the vest DNA being crime-specific. The underlying suggestion is the CCRC lacks resources and is reluctant to actually address wrongful convictions without substantial external pressure.
 
Elaedith said:
BBC article about this today.

It seems the CCRC rejected the idea of the vest DNA being crime-specific. The underlying suggestion is the CCRC lacks resources and is reluctant to actually address wrongful convictions without substantial external pressure.
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The CCRC deployed plenty of resource getting the Bamber case completely wrong, there is no quasi judicial review process anywhere that replaces lawyers with scientists.
 
saliva and DNA

Elaedith said:
BBC article about this today.

It seems the CCRC rejected the idea of the vest DNA being crime-specific. The underlying suggestion is the CCRC lacks resources and is reluctant to actually address wrongful convictions without substantial external pressure.
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"Documents now disclosed to Mr Malkinson show that in December 2009, the scientists told Crown Prosecution Service lawyers and Greater Manchester Police detectives they were sure they had identified DNA from an unknown man's saliva."
This is the second story that suggests that the source of the DNA was saliva. A substrate control (checking for DNA outside of the stained area) would not have been a bad idea. If the DNA were not found in the control area, this would strengthen the association. Yet assuming that saliva was correctly identified, then the DNA would be at source-level.

I saw one news report implying that the same DNA profile was found on her garment as on her fingernails. If that is true, then there is a very strong case to be made that the donor is the perpetrator.
 
A Guardian article today where Malkinson discusses problems with the CCRC. The article mentions several issues including the fact that CCRC investigating officers are usually ex-police.
 
facts vs. law

The Guardian quoted Mr. Malkinson's lawyer: “In Today’s interview with previous chair Graham Zellick he talked about how often he had meetings with the senior judiciary when he was in post. But investigation is not about what the law is, it is about what the facts are, and about what facts have been covered up by agents of the law.

“Investigative journalists have the skills that CCRC need, not barristers and judges. Their expertise is in legal decision-making and that should come last, when all the facts have been uncovered. With only half the facts, case decisions will always be flawed, whether at the CCRC level or in the court of appeal.”
 
Chris_Halkides said:
The Guardian quoted Mr. Malkinson's lawyer: “In Today’s interview with previous chair Graham Zellick he talked about how often he had meetings with the senior judiciary when he was in post. But investigation is not about what the law is, it is about what the facts are, and about what facts have been covered up by agents of the law.

“Investigative journalists have the skills that CCRC need, not barristers and judges. Their expertise is in legal decision-making and that should come last, when all the facts have been uncovered. With only half the facts, case decisions will always be flawed, whether at the CCRC level or in the court of appeal.”
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Agreed. The CCRC, IOPC and PIRC should be full of journalists investigating complaints about the police and miscarriages of justice.
 
three percent of cases referred to appeals courts

"The CCRC usually receives around 1,400 applications for reviews (convictions and/or sentences) each year. Since starting work in 1997, the CCRC has referred around 3% of applications to the appeal courts. " CCRC

My initial reaction is that this number sounds small.
 
jury not allowed to see witness statement

Chris_Halkides said:
Alec Samuels, "Andrew Malkinson: A miscarriage of justice?" Medicine, Science and the Law 2022, 62(2):95-96.
Abstract
In the case of Andrew Malkinson, a number of concerning or disturbing features about the conduct of the case by all involved have emerged. Application is therefore being made to the Criminal Cases Review Commission to reconsider and refer the case.

I found this via Wikipedia, but I have not yet read it.
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The Alec Samuels wrote, "The jury during the trial asked to see V’s witness statement and were refused." Mr. Samuels also wrote, "The CCRC is seriously underfunded and has real difficulty in efficiently and effectively dealing with the caseload. The CCRC is extremely reluctant to re-examine a matter previously examined and rejected."
 
timeline

The Guardian has a timeline here. In December of 2009, "A meeting log confirms the forensic scientist on the case recommends that Y-STR testing, which isolates the male chromosome (as commissioned by Malkinson’s lawyers a decade later), could be done to get a clearer result but the CPS advises against it."

Another article from The Guardian stated, "Malkinson’s conviction was overturned when DNA samples from the victim’s clothing, which had been preserved in a forensic archive, were tested and found to contain DNA from someone who was likely to have been the attacker. This breakthrough was almost missed as the victim’s vest top, bra, knickers and other clothing were destroyed by GMP, despite a preservation order being in place."

Bill Robertson stated that, "According to APPEAL, the new DNA breakthrough was only possible because samples had been retained in a forensic archive which the CCRC had neglected to search. Crucial exhibits were lost or destroyed by Greater Manchester Police, despite the force having a strict legal duty to retain them, meaning they were not available to be tested." The archiving of case material is a major issue in this essay.
 
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how he became a suspect

Paul Bracchi wrote, "Nevertheless, Mr Malkinson, who protested his innocence from the outset, became the prime and only serious suspect because two PCs remembered his face from pulling him over for riding on the back of an off-road motorbike the previous month and thought it matched the description of the rapist." He went on to discuss the DNA and the lack of disclosure, noting "All of this was uncovered by the campaigning legal charity Appeal."

If the CCRC and the CPS were functioning correctly, then why on earth would unraveling this mess fall to a charity?
 
withholding of information; CPS attitude

James Joseph of The Jurist quoted one of Mr. Malkinson's lawyers, Maximilian Hardy: "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."

At The Guardian Sonia Sodha wrote, "Three years after his 2004 conviction, the DNA of another man was found in a “crime specific” spot on the victim’s clothing by a nationwide forensic review. The police and the Crown Prosecution Service were notified, but a CPS lawyer said there was no need for further work unless the case was brought to appeal, and then his focus would be on “bolstering” the case against Malkinson."

Although their position at the time is not surprising, one might have hoped that the CPS would have had more of an open mind.
 
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The many problems at the CCRC

Jon Robins (of The Justice Gap) wrote, "One job that the CCRC has performed well over its 25 years is deflecting attention from other parts of our justice system which prevent the correction of miscarriages – notably, the Court of Appeal. The CCRC’s relationship with appeal judges has been described as a ‘statutory stranglehold’ – the watchdog can only refer cases back to the courts where it believes that there is a ‘real possibility’ that the judges will overturn that conviction. An increasingly conservative Court of Appeal has led to an increasingly timid watchdog."

The entire article is worth reading. I was struck by the fact that Helen Pitcher, chair of the CCRC, has eight other jobs.
 
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closure of the Forensic Science Service

At the Guardian Hannah Devlin wrote, "The past decade has seen an overhaul of forensic science provision in the UK after the closure of the Forensic Science Service in 2012. In the transition, criticism has largely focused on private providers, which have been behind the drug-driving test scandal at Randox, the multimillion-pound bailout of Key Forensics and the use of unaccredited labs. Many hope that commercial provision is now on a safer footing after the introduction this year of statutory powers for the government’s forensic science regulator, including the ability to shut down labs that do not meet quality standards.

At the Daily Mail linked above Paul Bracchi wrote, "The victim said the rapist had a local Bolton accent but Mr Malkinson grew up nearly 100 miles away in Grimsby and had spent much of the previous decade in Holland...Victim and witness were driven to the station in the same car, a clear breach of identity parade guidelines, because of the obvious risk of the witness influencing the victim and vice versa."
 
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more than 100% certain

There is nothing left of the case against Mr. Malkinson than the victim's stated certainty. Professor Dan Simon wrote, "The third commonly used accuracy cue is the person's stated level of confidence.78 As with judgments of identifications, factfinders are more likely to believe testimony for the event that is accompanied by high levels of confidence. One study found that more confident prosecution witnesses ("I am absolutely sure" versus "I am reasonably sure") led to double the estimations of the probability of guilt and quadruple the conviction rates.79 The effect of confidence has been replicated in a number of studies.80" The trouble is that certainty can be influenced by a number of contaminating factors.
 
Chris_Halkides said:
Jon Robins (of The Justice Gap) wrote, "One job that the CCRC has performed well over its 25 years is deflecting attention from other parts of our justice system which prevent the correction of miscarriages – notably, the Court of Appeal. The CCRC’s relationship with appeal judges has been described as a ‘statutory stranglehold’ – the watchdog can only refer cases back to the courts where it believes that there is a ‘real possibility’ that the judges will overturn that conviction. An increasingly conservative Court of Appeal has led to an increasingly timid watchdog."

The entire article is worth reading. I was struck by the fact that Helen Pitcher, chair of the CCRC, has eight other jobs.
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The chair is supposed to be at some distance from the organisation. The chief executive will run the organisation. A full time chair is less likely to provide independent oversight, and more likely to conflict with the CEO. The chair and non-executive directors provide oversight and the executive directors are answerable to them.
 
Chris_Halkides said:
Jon Robins (of The Justice Gap) wrote, "One job that the CCRC has performed well over its 25 years is deflecting attention from other parts of our justice system which prevent the correction of miscarriages – notably, the Court of Appeal. The CCRC’s relationship with appeal judges has been described as a ‘statutory stranglehold’ – the watchdog can only refer cases back to the courts where it believes that there is a ‘real possibility’ that the judges will overturn that conviction. An increasingly conservative Court of Appeal has led to an increasingly timid watchdog."

The entire article is worth reading. I was struck by the fact that Helen Pitcher, chair of the CCRC, has eight other jobs.
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This was not the problem here. Indeed I am not sure that this is a problem, it would be of no value referring back cases with no chance of a successful appeal. The issue here was police / prosecutorial malpractice, and a failure to properly evaluate new forensic evidence.

Also the CCRC is not a watch dog. It was not intended to be a watchdog. Saying that it is failing at being something it was never intended to be may be good journalism but it is bad scholarship.
 
more than one kind of failure

Planigale said:
This was not the problem here. Indeed I am not sure that this is a problem, it would be of no value referring back cases with no chance of a successful appeal. The issue here was police / prosecutorial malpractice, and a failure to properly evaluate new forensic evidence.

Also the CCRC is not a watch dog. It was not intended to be a watchdog. Saying that it is failing at being something it was never intended to be may be good journalism but it is bad scholarship.
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I respectfully disagree: this is not an either/or problem; it is a both/and problem. The Guardian provided a timeline. From August of 2009: "Case log entry by a CCRC staff member reads: “Read papers today … I am slightly bemused by the submissions … Just because it appears there is someone else’s DNA on the complainant’s vest, not [the boyfriend’s] or the applicant’s, cannot surely produce a successful referral in view of all the other strong ID evidence." Has anyone at the CCRC watched "What Jennifer Saw," for example?

From October of 2011, "CCRC case log summarises a meeting with a forensic scientist and says they said: “We are not going to get a profile from the material available which is capable of being searched and as a result someone identified. On the face of things this tends to support the position that the commission has done everything reasonable and there is no convincing reason to take forensic investigation any further.” However, searchable DNA had already been found – and searched in 2007." And yet here we are in 2023 with a total of several profiles, thanks to Appeal.

Haroon Siddique of The Guardian wrote, While funding cuts have been severe, broader questions have been raised about how the resources it has are used. In 2018, a survey of lawyers suggested the CCRC was “not fit for purpose” with one of them describing the watchdog as “an office-bound, moribund organisation” that “doesn’t actually investigate”.

He continued, "The Westminster Commission said the [real possibility] test “encourages the CCRC to be too deferential to the court of appeal and to seek to second-guess what the court might decide, rather than reaching an independent judgment of whether there may have been a miscarriage of justice.”" For the sake of argument, let me suggest a different standard: The CCRC should make a referral when the new evidence weakens the Crown's case to below the clear and convincing evidence standard.
 
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Chris_Halkides said:
The Guardian has a timeline here. In December of 2009, "A meeting log confirms the forensic scientist on the case recommends that Y-STR testing, which isolates the male chromosome (as commissioned by Malkinson’s lawyers a decade later), could be done to get a clearer result but the CPS advises against it."

Another article from The Guardian stated, "Malkinson’s conviction was overturned when DNA samples from the victim’s clothing, which had been preserved in a forensic archive, were tested and found to contain DNA from someone who was likely to have been the attacker. This breakthrough was almost missed as the victim’s vest top, bra, knickers and other clothing were destroyed by GMP, despite a preservation order being in place."

Bill Robertson stated that, "According to APPEAL, the new DNA breakthrough was only possible because samples had been retained in a forensic archive which the CCRC had neglected to search. Crucial exhibits were lost or destroyed by Greater Manchester Police, despite the force having a strict legal duty to retain them, meaning they were not available to be tested." The archiving of case material is a major issue in this essay.
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Anyone working for the CCRC should know that this was not 'strong ID evidence', unless by 'strong' they just mean 'convincing to a jury'.
 
Planigale said:
This was not the problem here. Indeed I am not sure that this is a problem, it would be of no value referring back cases with no chance of a successful appeal. The issue here was police / prosecutorial malpractice, and a failure to properly evaluate new forensic evidence.

Also the CCRC is not a watch dog. It was not intended to be a watchdog. Saying that it is failing at being something it was never intended to be may be good journalism but it is bad scholarship.
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The problem is that where there is demonstrated malpractice or failure to properly evaluate new forensic evidence, there should be a chance of a successful appeal. I'm not sure if you mean that the CCRC can't do anything about this because it can't investigate alleged misconducted or negligence. IF CCRC was unable to do what was needed then it's powers need to be reviewed.

There is an upcoming independent review into the the case, report due in October.
 
CCRC mission

Planigale said:
Also the CCRC is not a watch dog. It was not intended to be a watchdog. Saying that it is failing at being something it was never intended to be may be good journalism but it is bad scholarship.
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Hi Planigale,

If not watch dog, then what term should be applied? And do you believe that the CCRC is succeeding in its intended mission?
 
investigation under statute; problems with the CCRC

"Kate Maynard, a solicitor at Hickman and Rose who is representing him in his claim for compensation, said: “While we welcome the announcement of an independent inquiry into the failings in Andy’s case, we regret that it is not a full public inquiry held under the Inquiries Act 2005. Only an inquiry held under statute can compel witnesses and disclosure.”"
The Guardian went on to quote Andrew Malkinson: "“My case shows that the police cannot be trusted to investigate impartially or act as faithful gatekeepers to the evidence,” he said. “It also shows that the CCRC, which could have spared me years of life behind bars, is not fit for purpose.”"Guardian. I will be pleasantly surprised if the inquiry accomplishes much.

Luke Gittos wrote, "Admittedly, it [the CCRC] does face two problems. It suffers from a lack of funding and it is also overburdened with applications that have no chance of success." I am sympathetic to this argument but only up to a point. Some cases appear to have no chance of success because there are several line of evidence that point to the guilt of the convicted person. But this may rest upon the fallacy that individual pieces of evidence are necessarily independent. The Kirk Bloodsworth case (which I mentioned briefly on the Luke Mitchell thread) is might be worth exploring in this regard.
 
The prosecution lawyer working for the CPS needs to be enquired into and how he/she managed to convince the jury of his guilt. How was the evidence manipulated?
 
DNA in multiple locations and Mr. B.

From the appeal document:

"Michael Seward did not attend an identification procedure until 14th January 2004, by which time he had read descriptions of the attacker in the press and had seen an e-fit drawing of the attacker. He picked out the appellant."

"The analysis of the sample taken from the vest top indicated the presence of DNA from at least two males. Some of the male DNA could have come from C’s partner. Some could have originated from a man who could also have contributed to male DNA in a sample recovered from the left cup of C’s bra. A check against a police database showed that the DNA profile on those samples matched the DNA profile of the man we have referred to as Mr B...The analysis of the sample taken from the vest top indicated the presence of DNA from at least two males. Some of the male DNA could have come from C’s partner. Some could have originated from a man who could also have contributed to male DNA in a sample recovered from the left cup of C’s bra. A check against a police database showed that the DNA profile on those samples matched the DNA profile of the man we have referred to as Mr B." (at 27-28)

"In addition, some of the male DNA extracted from another sample from the left upper front of the vest top could have originated from Mr B...Further, Y-STR profiling revealed DNA which could have come from Mr B in nail cuttings or scrapings taken from C’s left hand, and in three other samples taken from C or from an item of her clothing. In addition, further testing commissioned by the respondent detected DNA which could have come from Mr B on a speculum used during the internal examination of C." link
 
https://news.sky.com/story/andrew-m...nviction-as-significant-issues-found-12960592

"The complaints relate to an allegation regarding the failure to retain items of evidence and the failure to reveal information relating to two witnesses who gave evidence to the trial, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said."

This is just window dressing, as the lawyers and cops involved are likely long retired or gone. I am sure it is why it takes so long for MOJs to be admitted, as it gives those people time to escape justice.
 
inquiry

Nessie said:
https://news.sky.com/story/andrew-m...nviction-as-significant-issues-found-12960592

"The complaints relate to an allegation regarding the failure to retain items of evidence and the failure to reveal information relating to two witnesses who gave evidence to the trial, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said."

This is just window dressing, as the lawyers and cops involved are likely long retired or gone. I am sure it is why it takes so long for MOJs to be admitted, as it gives those people time to escape justice.
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Hi Nessie,

From your link: "While it [the inquiry] is independent, it is not statutory and therefore is not able to compel people to come before it." I don't see how an inquiry constituted with such limited scope and powers will accomplish much.
 
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