In the early hours of 19 July, 2003, a sickening crime was committed.
A young woman was walking home alone after a drunken argument with her boyfriend, when she was pounced upon by then 29-year-old Paul Quinn.
Fuelled by alcohol and anger that he had failed to “cop off” any women in his local nightclub, he dragged her down an embankment beside the M61 motorway in Salford, where he strangled her until she was unconscious, then raped her.
But in the months and years that followed, a second innocent victim had their life changed forever, this time due to errors made by the British state.
Andrew Malkinson, a man from Grimsby who had been working in the area as a security guard, was convicted over the attack and spent 17 years in prison, despite being guilty of nothing more than bearing a passing resemblance to the true offender.
There was no forensic evidence and the prosecution case rested almost entirely on Malkinson being identified by three witnesses, including the victim, who turned out to be wrong.
Meanwhile, Quinn, a dangerous sexual predator who lived only a mile from the scene, continued to roam the streets.
Quinn giving evidence at Manchester Crown Court (Photo: Elizabeth Cook/PA)Almost 23 years later, Quinn is finally facing justice after his DNA was matched to samples taken from the victim at the time of the attack.
Now balding and wearing glasses, Quinn, aged 52, was found guilty by a jury at Manchester Crown Court on Friday afternoon.
Having botched the original investigation, Greater Manchester Police (GMP) has issued an unprecedented apology to Malkinson, whose conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal in 2023.
Assistant Chief Constable Steph Parker said: “The fact that Andrew was imprisoned for 17 years, for a crime he didn’t commit, is clearly a failing of Greater Manchester Police, and the wider criminal justice system. And for that, we are absolutely sorry.
“We are determined that this cannot happen again.”
The law firm acting for Malkinson said he “welcomes” the verdict but that authorities must now be held to account for their failings.
Quinn’s history of sexual violence
Malkinson’s wrongful conviction is one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British legal history and a public inquiry will seek to answer a wide range of questions about how it happened.
It can now be reported for the first time that Quinn had an extensive criminal record, including for sexual offences and violence, dating back to 1986 when he was just 12-years-old.
In 1991, he was convicted of sexual activity with a girl aged under 13. It was this crime that resulted in Quinn having his DNA collected in 2012 as part of a national operation to swab 12,000 serious offenders who were not already on the database.
The intention was to help police solve cold cases but it was not until Malkinson’s legal team, led by the charity APPEAL, commissioned their own fresh forensic testing in 2021 that the true attacker’s DNA was discovered.
Detectives remain concerned that Quinn may have committed more crimes, both before and after, the 2003 rape. The i Paper understands police have identified three unsolved “stranger” rapes which share similarities with the Malkinson case as of particular interest.
A public inquiry led by Sarah Munro KC is due to examine all the circumstances including the actions of GMP, the Crown Prosecution Service and the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) which twice refused Malkinson’s applications to appeal.
Andrew Malkinson after his conviction was quashed (Photo: Jordan Pettitt/PA)Five retired police officers and one still serving have been told they are under investigation for potential gross misconduct by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), with one officer warned they could face criminal charges.
However, experts have told The i Paper the Malkinson scandal demonstrates a major overhaul of witness identification procedures is needed, and that a similar scandal could happen again.
Issues with eyewitness accounts
Despite an increase in the amount of CCTV, forensic and digital evidence available, an eyewitness account remains one of the most powerful tools available in a criminal prosecution.
But experts have long held concerns about its reliability, especially when it comes to identification.
In 1969, a man called Laszlo Virag was convicted of stealing from parking meter coin boxes in Liverpool, having been wrongfully identified by eight eyewitnesses.
The miscarriage of justice, and others which shared similarities, led to the publication of the Devlin report in 1976 which warned that witnesses often overstate their ability to correctly identify the right person.
Recommendations were made, including that juries can receive what is known as a “Turnbull” warning not to rely solely on identification evidence when deciding if a person is guilty.
Quinn pictured in 2003 just months before the attack (Photo: GMP)However, Andrew Roberts, Professor of Law at the University of Melbourne, says the Malkinson case shows that 50 years later, little has changed.
“What Malkinson demonstrates is that we haven’t really learned the lessons [of Laszlo Virag],” he said.
“I hope [the public inquiry] results in meaningful reform. If it doesn’t we will probably be back in this position in another ten, 20 or 30 years.”
Victim told police she ‘wasn’t sure’ at Malkinson trial
All three eyewitnesses who identified Andrew Malkinson used the VIPER (Video Identification Parades Electronic Recording) system, developed by West Yorkshire Police in the late 1990s and still used more than 20,000 times per year by UK police forces.
Witnesses are shown a video lineup which usually includes eight volunteers, who are similar in appearance, and the suspect.
Each person appears for around 15 seconds and moves their head left and right during the sequence.
Quinn’s victim picked out Malkinson during a VIPER held at a police station two weeks after she was attacked.
However, she was not asked about how confident she was in her assertion.
During Quinn’s trial, she admitted publicly for the first time that she has always harboured doubts.
She told jurors that she immediately felt worried Malkinson was not the right man when she saw him in the dock at his trial in 2004, and raised her concerns with a police officer.
“I said that I wasn’t too sure it was the right man,” she told Quinn’s jury. “They said ‘don’t worry it’s just trial nerves, everything will be OK’.”
The jury also heard that Beverly Craig, the second witness who says she saw the attacker, initially identified another man rather than Malkinson during her VIPER procedure in 2004, before changing her mind.
The third witness, Michael Seward, who is now deceased, was Craig’s partner and was not brought in to conduct his VIPER identity procedure until six months after the offence, meaning he had ample opportunity to have conferred with her.
Jurors in both trials were not told that Craig and Seward also had convictions for dishonesty and a history of heavy drug abuse despite concerns this would affect their reliability.
‘Law hasn’t kept pace with science’
Roberts has co-authored a paper alongside fellow academic and part-time judge Andrew Ormerod calling for a “Devlin 2.0” committee of legal experts to examine witness identification problems.
“For some time now, the message to those involved in the criminal justice system from cognitive psychologists has been that remembering is a constructive process, and that memories for experienced events will always be incomplete,” they write.
“The law has, disappointingly, failed to keep pace with evolving scientific understanding of memory.”
Potential changes to the VIPER system could include carrying it out sequentially, rather than simultaneously. This would mean the witness would have to decide after viewing each person whether they are the offender or not before moving on, rather than deciding at the end.
The e-fit image issued by police in 2003 (Photo: GMP)Experts says this prevents “relative judgment strategy”, when witnesses choose the person who most resembles their recollection of the offender, irrespective of how similar they are to their memory.
Eyewitnesses could also be asked to give a confidence rating for how certain they are in their identification.
Dr Ruth Horry, a cognitive psychologist at Swansea University, is among a group of academics who first recommended this to police forces back in 2013 – but it has yet to be implemented.
“What tends to happen is you get what’s called ‘confidence inflation’ over time,” she said.
“So usually by the time someone is in a court room they are going to say they are 100 per cent confident.
“Over time you get this reinforcement that ‘I must have made the right decision otherwise why on Earth would this person be on trial’.”
Dr Horry argues that if witnesses express low confidence or change their mind – as Beverly Craig did when identifying Malkinson – their evidence should be discounted.
She has also pushed for a “double blind” process so that neither the witness, nor the police officer carrying out the VIPER procedure, know who the suspect is.
This would prevent the police officer giving the witness cues – either intentionally or unintentionally.
Malkinson ‘perfect example’ of witness problems
Detective Chief Superintendent Rebecca McKendrick, who led the investigation into Paul Quinn, said it was “completely unique” from any inquiry she has been involved in before “because there are two victims”.
“We’ve got this victim who’s been through this horrendous attack, then we’ve got what happened to Mr Malkinson and all that time he spent in prison,” she said.
Det McKendrick admitted that the Quinn investigation has illustrated the weaknesses of relying on witnesses.
She said: “Witness identification is always an area that can be subjective, it’s based on human recognition, and sometimes that isn’t completely accurate. [It] absolutely still has its place in investigations, but in my view, it has got to be in conjunction with something else.
“There are real drawbacks to relying on witness identification in its entirety and this case is a perfect example of that.”
The i Paper understands the police misconduct investigation being carried out by the IOPC will look at whether officers followed the appropriate processes during the identification of Malkinson, as well as whether witnesses were offered any incentive to provide evidence, the alleged failure to disclose information that may have helped Malkinson’s defence at trial, and the handling and disposal of items of evidence.
IOPC director Amanda Rowe said: “A team of highly experienced investigators continues to carefully consider Mr Malkinson’s complaints, relating to the actions of GMP during the investigation and the trial in 2004.
“This is a hugely complex and time-consuming process, in part because of the passage of time and the large amount of evidence and lines of inquiry to consider, but our work is vital to get Mr Malkinson the answers he deserves and give the public confidence that, when things go wrong like this, there will be scrutiny and lessons will be learned.”
Solicitor Toby Wilton, who is representing Andrew Malkinson, said his client “welcomes the fact that justice has been done, but it is justice very long delayed.”
He added: “This trial further exposed how both the victim of this terrible crime and Mr Malkinson could have been spared years of pain and injustice but for failures by Greater Manchester Police, the CPS and the Criminal Cases Review Commission.
“Paul Quinn lived near to the scene of the crime. He matched the victim’s description of her attacker in number of important respects including – unlike Andrew Malkinson – having a local accent. His ex-wife gave evidence that he had come home without his shirt on the night of the attack.
“But, as the Court heard, within days the police were entirely focussed on prosecuting Mr Malkinson. It also heard that the victim raised doubts to police about her identification of Mr Malkinson at the time.
“The ongoing investigations into this appalling miscarriage of justice by the Andrew Malkinson Inquiry and the Independent Office for Police Conduct must be allowed to continue their vital work so that lessons can be learned and those responsible held to account.”
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