Sorry we failed you, legal chief tells man wrongly jailed for rape
A MAN who spent 17 years in jail for a rape he did not commit won a grovelling apology yesterday.
Helen Pitcher, beleaguered chairman of the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), offered an ‘unreserved apology’ to Andrew Malkinson, adding that the appeals body had ‘failed’ him. During Mr Malkinson’s marathon quest to clear his name, CCRC officials twice rejected his applications to have his case referred to the Court of Appeal.
This was despite DNA being found that linked another man to the rape he was wrongly convicted of. Ms Pitcher’s apology follows the completion of a report into the CCRC’s work on his case, led by top barrister Chris Henley KC, which is understood to be damning.
According to reports, police and prosecutors knew in 2007 that forensic testing had found a searchable male DNA profile on the victim’s vest top that did not match Mr Malkinson’s.
However, he spent another 13 years in prison, and in that time the CCRC twice refused to refer his case for appeal, or to commission further forensic tests.
A source close to the Henley review said the report is highly critical of how the CCRC applies the ‘ real possibility’ test to decide whether a case should be referred to the Court of Appeal, and that his conclusions could have serious implications for other alleged miscarriages of justice.
Ms Pitcher said: ‘ Mr Henley’s report makes sobering reading, and it is clear that the commission failed Andrew Malkinson. For this, I am deeply sorry. I have written to Mr Malkinson to offer him my sincere regret and an unreserved apology on behalf of the commission.
‘There may have been a belief that I have been unwilling ever to apologise to Mr Malkinson... Offering a genuine apology required a clear understanding of the circumstances in which the commission failed Mr Malkinson. We now have that.
Ms Pitcher, who works part time and holds several other jobs, is now facing an increasingly uncertain future, not only over the Malkinson case, but a string of other controversies, including that of the alleged ‘Burking’ murderer Clive Freeman.
As the Mail has reported in an investigative series over the last few weeks, Freeman may have spent 35 years in jail for a murder that never happened. Amid criticism of how his case has been handled, the CCRC is now investigating it for a fifth time.
Cancer-stricken Freeman, 80, was initially jailed for a minimum of 13 years, but has remained behind bars for a further two decades because of his refusal to admit taking the life of Scots-born plumber Alexander Hardie.
The ex polo-playing landowner was convicted in 1989 of murdering Mr Hardie in what prosecutors said was part of a planned £300,000 insurance swindle.
According to prosecution pathologist Dr Richard Shepherd, he used ‘Burking’, a suffocation technique adopted by body snatchers Burke and Hare in Edinburgh in 1828, to kill Mr Hardie in London in 1988. Eight pathologists and forensic experts have debunked this theory.
Speaking on the Henley review, retired police superintendent Tony Thompson, who is leading Freeman’s bid for freedom, said: ‘The findings of the investigation into the handling of the case of Andrew Malkinson bear astonishing similarities to the incompetence and failings associated with Clive Freeman’s quest for justice.’
‘I offer him my sincere regret’