A man who denies a brutal rape in Salford for which an innocent man spent 17 years in jail has told a jury he does not know how his DNA got on the victim’s clothes.
Paul Quinn, 51, agreed it was his DNA on the woman’s vest top, which was only recovered years later after police were able to re-test a sample using better techniques, which came back as a billion-to-one match of his DNA profile.
By then, Andrew Malkinson had already been convicted and jailed for the rape in 2003.
Asked to explain why he had been searching on the internet for how long police keep DNA samples, Quinn replied: “Just inquisitiveness,” the jury at Manchester Crown Court was told.
Father-of-six Quinn denies any involvement in the attack on July 19, 2003, on Cleggs Lane, Little Hulton.
Mr Malkinson, working as a security guard at a shopping centre, was the victim of a terrible miscarriage of justice, the trial has heard.
No DNA evidence linked him to the crime but he had been wrongly picked out at an identity parade and later convicted and jailed, spending 17 years behind bars.
The DNA sample from the vest top had been identified in 2007, and analysis had ruled out any link to Mr Malkinson.
The sample was identified as coming from “Unknown Male 1”, but it was not until 2022 that police matched it to the defendant, who had given police a sample of his own DNA in 2012.
Lisa Wilding KC, defending Quinn, who was giving evidence from the witness box, asked him: “Do you accept it’s your DNA on the victim’s vest top?”
“I do, yes,” replied Quinn.
Ms Wilding continued: “Do you know how it got there?”
“I do not know,” the defendant replied.
Ms Wilding said: “Mr Quinn, did it get there because you raped and attacked her on that night?”
“No,” replied Quinn.
The victim, a mother-of-two in her 30s, was dragged from the street beside a motorway embankment, brutally beaten, with a nipple almost severed and her cheekbone fractured, and strangled unconscious before being raped twice.
Earlier in the trial, Quinn was accused of trying to explain away the DNA evidence by claiming to have led a highly promiscuous party lifestyle, sleeping with hundreds or even thousands of local women.
Quinn, who worked as a fencing contractor, was asked about police evidence of his internet use, including websites visited and Google searches on his iPhone, recovered after his arrest.
He was asked about one search using the term “Wrongly convicted cases in the UK”.
Quinn said: “I have always shown an interest in crime programmes, something I have always enjoyed watching. Like true crime.”
He was then asked why in August 2022 he had searched for “How long is DNA kept in the database”.
Quinn said: “It was just to satisfy questions I had in my own head. Just inquisitiveness.”
Mr Malkinson made multiple appeals for authorities to review his case before his final attempt led to his appeal against his conviction being granted by the Court of Appeal.
Now aged 60, and originally from Grimsby, Lincolnshire, he was released from jail in 2020.
Quinn, who moved from Little Hulton to Exeter, Devon, in 2017, after he separated and was divorced from his wife, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of rape, two alternative counts of indecent assault, grievous bodily harm and attempting to choke or strangle his victim to render her unconscious while he carried out the attack.
The trial continues.
By Pat Hurst, Press Association.
