Criminal review board 'sorry' for failing Andrew Malkinson
The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) has offered an "unreserved apology" to an innocent man who spent 17 years in prison.
Andrew Malkinson was wrongly convicted of raping a woman in Salford in 2003 and languished in the prison system until he was exonerated by DNA testing.
CCRC chairwoman Helen Pitcher said she was "deeply sorry" for "failing" Mr Malkinson.
In response, he criticised her for waiting until the conclusion of an independent review before offering the apology, calling it "too little, too late".
Mr Malkinson was formally acquitted in July 2023 but it later emerged that DNA implicating another suspect was discovered four years after he was jailed.
He had written to the CCRC asking it to refer his case to the Court of Appeal in 2009, but the commission refused to do so.
It refused to order further forensic testing in 2012 and declined a second application in 2020.
Mr Malkinson said: "It is hard for me to see sincerity in an apology after all this time - when you are truly sorry for what you have done, you respond immediately and instinctively, it wells up in you."
Ms Pitcher, however, said: "For me, offering a genuine apology required a clear understanding of the circumstances in which the commission failed Mr Malkinson. We now have that."
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