Andrew Malkinson had his conviction overturned in 2023 following the discovery of new DNA pointing to new suspect Paul Quinn.
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A man has gone on trial accused of the rape that led to one of the worst miscarriages of justice ever seen in Britain.
Andrew Malkinson spent 17 years in prison for a rape he did not commit. The 60-year-old had his conviction overturned in 2023 after years protesting his innocence.
He has been described as “the victim of a most terrible miscarriage of justice, one of the worst there has been,” John Price KC, prosecuting, told a jury at Manchester Crown Court.
Paul Quinn, 51, is now on trial for the crime Malkinson was wrongfully locked up for.
Quinn, 29 at the time of the offences and who now lives in Exeter, Devon, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of rape, grievous bodily harm and attempting to choke or strangle his victim to render her unconscious while he carried out the attack.
It comes after fresh analysis of DNA evidence from the scene pointed to Quinn, and not Malkinson, Manchester crown court heard.
A jury of seven women and five men was told that DNA matching Quinn’s profile was discovered on the victim’s clothing and body.
The victim, at the time in her 30s, was walking home in the early hours of the morning in the height of summer, jurors were told.
She was strangled unconscious, beaten and twice raped in a “prolonged assault”, suffering a fractured cheek bone.
Dazed and bruised, clothes torn and face bloodied, she clambered back up the motorway embankment, telling a man she came across: “I have been attacked and raped.”
Opening the case for the prosecution, Mr Price said: “Andrew Malkinson was not to be released from this sentence until December 2020.
“So, Mr Andrew Malkinson, served more than 17 years in prison.
“It is the prosecution case that Andrew Malkinson was the victim of a most terrible miscarriage of justice, one of the worst there has been.
“Evidence gathered in this second investigation, including, as mentioned, DNA evidence, and which will be presented in this trial, proves, it is submitted, that it was Paul Quinn and not Andrew Malkinson who had attacked the victim on 19th July, 2003.”
Mr Price said DNA evidence recovered by police matches Quinn’s DNA profile and was found on the clothing and body of the rape victim and it could only have been deposited by her attacker as neither the woman or the defendant knew each other.
Jurors heard the crime scene was secured by a cordon and mobile police station set up for officers to respond to enquiries and to receive information from passing members of the public.
Two local officers were given a description of the suspect by a detective, a white man with tanned or olive skin, of slim build, and they recalled a man they had spoken to earlier that summer – Mr Malkinson.
The rape victim had also told officers she had scratched the face of her attacker and he would have a mark on his face.
Following up their own lead, the next day the two offices at the mobile police station went to see Mr Malkinson at his place of work as a security guard at the Ellesmere Shopping Centre in nearby Walkden.
He had no scratch on his face but jurors were told his appearance was considered “strikingly to match” the description of the attacker.
At the time Mr Malkinson lived with a friend in a flat in Little Hulton, around a mile-and-a-half from the scene of the rape attack.
Six days after the attack Mr Malkinson, who had been having problems with people who he had previously lived with, abruptly quit his job and left, telling a friend he was going to Holland.
This sudden departure prompted police to track Mr Malkinson down to a Salvation Army Hostel in Grimsby, where he was arrested and brought back to Salford to attend an identity parade.
Two people, Beverley Craig and Michael Seward, now deceased, were travelling through the area at the time of the rape.
Days later, on August 3, 2003, Ms Craig and the victim took part in a procedure to try to identify the rapist, called a Viper procedure, where witnesses are asked to view a screen of a number of faces, including the suspect.
Both Ms Craig and the victim picked out an image of Mr Malkinson as the suspect. He was charged over the attack that day.
Mr Seward also identified Mr Malkinson as the suspect.
Mr Price told jurors it may seem difficult to believe three people could all identify the wrong man, adding: “Yet the evidence now available demonstrates, it is submitted, that they did.”
Jurors later heard about DNA evidence in the case, which had only emerged during a “slow burn” process, as new techniques came to be developed, which revealed DNA which had previously lain undetected.
At the 2004 trial of Mr Malkinson, there was no DNA evidence to assist as to the identity of the attacker but advances made since had ruled out Mr Malkinson’s DNA being present on the victim or her clothing.
However, Mr Price said the earliest indication of a DNA test result which, “ought to have set alarm bells ringing” had been in 2007, some 13 years before Mr Malkinson was released from prison.
And renewed scientific testing gathered pace around 2020, as the safety of Mr Malkinson’s conviction was looked at.
A DNA profile had been re-tested from the area of the victim’s vest top, which had saliva staining as the woman’s nipple was partially severed from a bite by her attacker.
The sample, which did not match Mr Malkinson’s, was given the name, “Unknown Male 1.”
Jurors heard in 2022, Greater Manchester Police (GMP) got information which helped them identify the sample ‘Unknown Male 1’ as belonging to Paul Quinn, who, in 2003, had lived in Little Hulton.
Scientists will explain the likelihood of the DNA profile belonging to Quinn or somebody else, the prosecutor said.
But Mr Price continued: “But the bottom line is, ladies and gentleman, that it is estimated the findings would be at least one billion times more likely if he was a contributor than if he was not.”
The trial was adjourned until Thursday morning.