An innocent man who was wrongly jailed for 17 years for a crime he didn’t commit faces having to pay for prison ‘board and lodging’ as he blasted his ‘kidnappers’.
Andrew Malkinson, now 57, on Wednesday finally won a 20-year battle to clear his name after he was in 2003 given a life sentence with a minimum term of seven years, after being found guilty of raping a woman in Greater Manchester.
Andrew Malkinson is now living on benefits but could be in line for up to £1 million in compensation for his wrongful conviction, but his lawyers warned their client may be waiting years, and the victim of the miscarriage of justice was additionally outraged by the possibility that he would have to pay for the ‘torture’ he suffered for nearly 20 years and that the substantial totality of his compensation might be deducted to be repaid to the prison, HMP Frankland, for food and accommodation expenses.
Mr Malkinson served ten more years because he maintained his innocence, but his conviction was quashed by senior judges at the Court of Appeal on Wednesday after DNA evidence linking another man to the crime came to light.
Charity Appeal, who took on the case, said it took Greater Manchester Police (GMP) to court twice to obtain evidence which had been withheld from the defence at Mr Malkinson’s original trial.
They also accused the force of unlawfully destroying critical evidence connected to the case.
Mr Malkinson told the BBC World at One that the rules around financial claims for wrongful imprisonment were ‘kind of sick’.
The rules were introduced by judges relating to the case of men who were wrongly convicted of the murder of paperboy Carl Bridgewater in 1978.
A 2007 decision by the House of Lords, which was at the time the UK’s highest court, said that cousins Vincent and Michael Hickey, who were freed by the Court of Appeal after their convictions were found to be flawed, said that their compensation should be decreased.
Michael Hickey was awarded £1.02 million and his cousin got £550,000 but both of their awards were lowered by a quarter as they hadn’t had to pay for living expenses while in custody. The law lords’ ruling was backed by the European Court of Human Rights after an appeal.
The Justice Secretary will also be integral to the decision of whether or not Mr Malkinson receives compensation, a maximum of £1 million for someone who’s been falsely incarcerated for ten years or longer.
Our legal system is a joke if they expect this man to pay for a prison sentence they implemented, but if you’re a migrant then you get everything for free.
They can take it out of the many millions they earn to pay this man for unlawful imprisonment, and for every year that he spent in there.
Send the bill to the Greater Manchester police, and let them pay for his lodgings.
This man should be paid at least 17 million for lost earnings and a life destroyed because even though he’s been found not guilty, this stigma will follow him around for the rest of his life, but to be honest, no amount of money will ever make up for the massive blunder that was made, but I’d just want to bleed the force dry for a false conviction.
So, it is true, the UK has become a madhouse run by the wokery, and this man will now find it difficult to find work and he will have people taking advantage of him, his whole life has gone to pot, the compensation needs to be extremely high because he spent time in prison for no reason at all, apart from the fact that the police were either inept or corrupt.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 