Peter Sullivan: Man jailed for 1986 homicide acquitted after 38 years

A person who has served 38 years in jail for the homicide of a girl has had his conviction quashed by way of the Court of Appeal after new DNA proof emerged.

Peter Sullivan was once jailed over the 1986 killing of 21-year-old barmaid Diane Sindall, who was once subjected to a frenzied sexual assault in Birkenhead, Merseyside, as she walked house from a shift.

The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) – the statutory frame set as much as examine doable miscarriages of justice – had referred Mr Sullivan’s case again to the enchantment courtroom ultimate 12 months after contemporary trying out discovered a DNA profile pointing to an unknown attacker in semen samples preserved from the crime scene.

Mr Sullivan, showing on video-link from HMP Wakefield, sobbed and held his surrender his mouth as he was once informed he could be launched.

Now elderly 68, he’s believed to be the sufferer of the longest miscarriage of justice involving a residing prisoner in British prison historical past.

Duncan Atkinson KC, representing the Crown Prosecution Service, had mentioned his shopper agreed the DNA proof undermined Mr Sullivan’s conviction and there could be no software to hunt a retrial.

Judge Lord Justice Holroyde mentioned the proof “plainly did point to a sexual aspect of the attack on Miss Sindall” and the “inference was very strong” that DNA had belonged to the true killer.

He endured: “There is no evidence to suggest more than one man was involved in the murder, and no evidence to suggest semen may have deposited in the process of consensual sexual activity.”

The pass judgement on mentioned he had “no doubt it is necessary and expedient in the interests of justice” to confess the proof of forensic scientists.

“In the light of that evidence it is impossible to regard the appellant’s conviction as safe.”

The courtroom heard generation had best very lately been advanced to the purpose the place the semen pattern, recovered from Miss Sindall’s stomach, might be examined for DNA.