A man has gone on trial for the rape of a woman in Salford, for which an innocent man spent 17 years in jail, a court heard.
Andrew Malkinson, 60, was “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.
Malkinson, at the time working as a security guard, had been wrongly picked out at a police identity parade and happened to live near the crime scene, a remote area down a motorway embankment in Little Hulton.
He was subsequently jailed in 2004, but Mr Price said the prosecution’s case was that the real culprit was the man now sat in the dock, Paul Quinn, 51, who really carried out the sex attack on 19 July 2003.
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.
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’s 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.”
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 cheekbone.
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.”
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 a 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.”
The trial continues.
Report supplied by PA Media.
