LONDON (AP) — A father of six was sentenced Friday to 21 years in prison for a rape 23 years ago that another man had been wrongly convicted of, in what is widely considered to have been one of the U.K.'s worst miscarriages of justice in recent years.Paul Quinn, 52, was found guilty in April following a six-week trial at Manchester Crown Court on two counts of rape, one count of choking with intent, and one count of grievous bodily harm. Quinn’s sentence comprises 21 years in custody with an extended license of three years when he will be let out of prison but subject to release conditions. He will be eligible for parole in 14 years.“You sat back and enjoyed your liberty at the expense of an innocent man,” Justice Robert Bright told Quinn at Friday’s sentencing hearing.Quinn was aged 29 at the time of the rape but had been a sex offender from the age of 12.
Andrew Malkinson, 60, had his conviction quashed by the Court of Appeal in July 2023 after DNA evidence linked Quinn to the crime. Malkinson spent 17 years behind bars for the brutal 2003 attack on a 33-year-old woman in Greater Manchester, who had picked him out from a police lineup.
Malkinson, who was working as a security guard at a local shopping center at the time of the attack, was found guilty in 2004 and sentenced to a life sentence, with a minimum term of seven years. He always maintained his innocence and as a result served ten years more in jail than the minimum sanctioned by the judge in the case. He was eventually released from prison in 2020, but his name remained on Britain’s sex offenders register.
