LETTER FROM LONDON
On July 26, Andrew Malkinson, 57, walked out of the London Court of Appeal a free man. The man was definitely cleared after seventeen years behind bars for a crime – an ultraviolent rape near Manchester in 2003 – which he had not committed. His horrific story is that of one of the UK’s worst miscarriages of justice and highlights serious dysfunctions in the country’s police and justice systems.
“When the judge said I was free, I started shaking. My eyes filled with tears, but I wasn’t ready to cry. One of the first thoughts that came to me was that I could finally go on vacation”testified Andrew Malkinson leaving the Court of Appeal to journalist Emily Dugan, of the Guardianwho had been following his case for months. “I have finally been cleared but I am here, without having obtained an apology, an explanation, without work, without housing. I’m just expected to slip away without reparations for the huge black hole that’s been opened up in my life.”added the man, salt-and-pepper beard and voice vibrating with anger.
In 2003, at the age of 37, Mr. Malkinson had a passion for travel, which he financed by chaining food jobs. Born in Grimsby, in the North East of England, he is passing through the United Kingdom after a stay of several years in the Netherlands. Without stories or a criminal record, he was nevertheless arrested by the police two weeks after, in the early hours of July 19, 2003, in Salford, on the outskirts of Manchester, a 33-year-old woman was left for dead after being raped. In February 2004, he was sentenced to life imprisonment with an incompressible sentence seven years old by a popular jury after the victim claimed to have recognized him, but without any physical or DNA evidence demonstrating his guilt.
“I am a pacifist, I hate violence”
Behind bars, he will tirelessly proclaim his innocence, refusing to participate in rehabilitation programs which could have earned him an early release. “I thought about it, but lying about my innocence was worse for me than staying in prison. I am a pacifist, I hate violence”, he explained on BBC Radio 4 shortly after the judgment on appeal. Supported by a network of friends and a charity, Appeal, fighting for the recognition of miscarriages of justice, Andrew Malkinson will be released from prison in December 2020 (for good behavior), but will still have to wait two and a half years for his conviction for the crime. sex is finally erased.
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