Sex offender convicted of rape after innocent man’s wrongful imprisonment
A sex offender has been found guilty of a brutal rape that left another man jailed for 17 years after an infamous miscarriage of justice.
Paul Quinn, 52, was found guilty by a jury of sexually assaulting a young mother as she walked home in Little Hulton, Salford, in the early hours of July 19, 2003.
Andrew Malkinson, who worked as a security guard at a local shopping mall, protested his innocence but was mistakenly singled out in an ID parade and jailed.
Father-of-six Quinn, a 12-year-old sex offender, was arrested almost two decades after advances in DNA testing meant his DNA profile was a one-in-a-billion match with saliva left on the victim’s vest in 2022.
By then Mr Malkinson, from Grimsby in North East Lincolnshire, had made several unsuccessful appeals.
The now 60-year-old was only released in 2020 after serving 17 years in prison, and his conviction was finally overturned by the Court of Appeal in 2023.
Following a six-week trial at Manchester Crown Court, Quinn was found guilty of two counts of rape on Friday.
He was also found guilty of causing grievous bodily harm when carrying out the attack and of strangling or attempting to strangle his victim to unconsciousness.
The repercussions of the case continue; A public inquiry is ongoing after a 2024 review found flaws that could have cleared Mr Malkinson a decade before he is released from prison.
Additionally, five former Greater Manchester Police officers and one current officer are under investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), and both the chairman and chief executive of the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) have resigned.
