Man wrongly jailed for two years for rape has payout claim denied
A MAN who was wrongly convicted of rape after police missed crucial Facebook message evidence has been refused compensation for spending more than two years in jail.
Danny Kay had his conviction quashed in 2017 when the Court of Appeal ruled police had relied on an ‘edited and misleading’ account of online conversations provided by his complainant. Mr Kay’s sister-in-law found the messages that cleared him after just a minute searching online.
Appeal court judges ruled that the full exchanges supported his claim that sex had been consensual.
Messages hidden in the original case showed there had been far greater contact after the alleged rape between Mr Kay and the complainant than the jury had been told about.
But two years on, officials at the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) have turned down the 28-year-old’s claim for more than £500,000 compensation.
They say that the online exchanges revealed at the appeal had cast doubt on Mr Kay’s conviction but failed to prove his innocence. A letter from the MoJ to Mr Kay said: ‘We regret to inform you that the Secretary of State for Justice has concluded that you are not entitled to compensation under the statutory scheme.
‘The Secretary of State for Justice has concluded that the conviction was not reversed as a result of a new or newly discovered fact that shows beyond reasonable doubt that you did not commit the offence.’
Last night, Mr Kay said he is now considering a judicial review after being advised he could expect more than £500,000 in compensation. He told The Mail on Sunday: ‘The whole thing nearly ruined my life. If the evidence was good enough to overturn my conviction, why isn’t it good enough to reward me compensation?’
Mr Kay said he owed his liberty to his sister-in-law Sarah Madison who found the Facebook messages on his account. At his trial at Derby Crown Court in 2013, Mr Kay’s accuser said there had been little contact between them after sex. The jury was given a misleading impression of a message reading ‘sorry’, which was construed as being about the alleged rape. In fact, it was a response to the woman asking why he was ignoring her. Also omitted from the version presented to the jury was her response: ‘Dnt [sic] be.’
In another message, Mr Kay asks for her number because he had lost it. She readily supplies it, accompanied by four kisses. The accuser says: ‘im still here for ya!’ And in a separate message, after the pair had split up, she said: ‘I thought u woulda at least tried to get me back.’