Man jailed for 1986 murder has conviction quashed

[SerendipityJane]

Let's hope any compensation he gets isn't swallowed up by his charges for board and lodging.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce809e3gd1xo

Horrifying. There's something very wrong with our justice system.

This scares me. When I was a daft drunk teenager I made the same walk on my own that Diane did. I was lucky and managed to get home safe in a taxi. When my DM found out what I’d done she scared the fuck out of me telling me about what happened to Diane. I never did it again. My DD and I often go I to Birkenhead on the bus as we live nearby and pass her memorial.
How will she ever get justice now? People might not be aware of the extent of vile things that were done to her. At this point it’s unlikely someone else will be found.
Theres a similar case near to my home, the Pillbox murder. Unidentified woman. Also vile how she was disposed of. Never identified.

Why couldn’t the DNA be tested until now? Didn’t they have DNA testing in the 80s?

https://www.wirralhistory.uk/pillboxmurder.html

Take a look at the Stefan Kiszko case for another miscarriage of justice. He was jailed for 16 years for murdering a young girl. The Police and (apparently) the Prosecution knew full well it was not him. He had the mental age of a seven year old, and he was impotent. The Sperm recovered at the scene was not "impotent". They were that desperate for it to be him they kept the results from his defense team.

In our view, whenever there was a high profile case, historically the police got some poor bloke(s) of low intelligence, who they could pressure into making a confession. It didn’t matter if they had done it or not, so long as the police looked good for solving the case!

Hence all these miscarriages of justice coming to light years later!

DNA evidence was first used in 1986 and helped convict Colin Pitchfork.

It wasn't routinely available to police in the 1980s, although it was being developed and tested in scientific fields.

Thanks @Howtohelpfriend and @SwanOfThoseThings.

Likely he won't get any compensation. Sam Hallam and Victor Nealon, also we're wrongly convicted ... no compensation and they took it as high as they could.

I believe the problem was that the evidential DNA sample they did have was so small that it would all be needed for a single test. If the test was inconclusive there would have been nothing left to prove innocence.

Very recent advances in DNA testing made it possible to test without destroying everything. Sullivan’s legal team accepted this.

They made Victor Nealon pay for the test that exonerated him too. So not only no compensation, but a bill on leaving prison.

The Home Office is the most spiteful official organisation of any government in the world. They are institutionally rotten, and have corrupted every single Home Secretary for the past century.

It’s just staggering. A relative of mine is Diane Sindall’s cousin. I can’t imagine her family’s torment.

And as for this poor man, a whole life wasted. That’s two lives that have been innocently taken. Could they not have checked this DNA evidence before 2025, even if it wasn’t around at the time of the murder.

Why can’t the police use commercial databases for DNA matches? Everyone gets some matches, even if it’s distant cousins. Surely it would help them to narrow it down.

Absolutely horrendous 😢 how can you possibly compensate someone for having stolen nearly 40 years of their life?! Poor poor man 😔

Also feel for Diane's family. This must be absolutely awful for them too, having it all dragged up again. No justice for their loved one and the person who killed her is still walking free, if not dead by now. Has that person killed others too?

how can you possibly compensate someone for having stolen nearly 40 years of their life?!

I think the British attitude begins the the premise that since you can't, it's not worth trying.

As others have said, in cases like this my mind flies to the wrongly accused, and the victim. No justice whichever way you look. And an evil man has roamed free for decades…
the whole thing makes me shudder. .

an evil man has roamed free for decades…

This is the blindingly obvious conclusion of punishing the wrong person. And one reason why the death penalty is a bad idea and people who think it isn't aren't very bright. When you execute the wrong person (which you obviously will one day) then you simultaneously gift the real offender (presumably a murderer) the chance to have another victim.

The fact this really happened in history (look up "John Christie") should be the final word in the debate.

Ruth Ellis should never have been hanged either. She was a victim of DV and had just had a miscarriage. If anything, she should have been considered of diminished responsibility?

With all due respect, bringing the Ellis case into this case is particularly insulting.

She committed the act that she was punished for. No one - including herself - ever said she did not shoot Blakely.

In this case we are talking about someone who did not commit the crime. It's not just comparing apples and oranges. It's offensively comparing apples and oranges to prove gravity.

Andrew Malkinson: Why are some wrongfully convicted prisoners charged jail living costs? - BBC News

When I first learned of this (in the 90s after the Guildford 4 were made to pay them) I thought it was a disgusting sick joke. Apparently I was the odd one out.

Good to see public opinion finally caught up.

Terrible. Poor man. You’d just never recover from this, would you.

This is a public forum, where anyone can express their opinions. I don’t agree with you. Imo, some people are wrongly convicted of murder, often because they make a false confession due to low intelligence and the court did not consider their mental state. They lose decades of their life, because of it. Ruth Ellis was wrongly convicted of murder, because the court failed to consider her mental state and was killed by the State for it.

Nowadays, she’d have been charged with manslaughter with diminished responsibility, with the domestic violence/coercive control and miscarriage as mitigating factors - either of which, never mind both, would have caused significant mental impairment.

Look at the Sally Challon case, or the mother, who killed her children, with a life limiting condition in London. The mother wasn’t jailed - she was sent to a hospital. Ruth Ellis could have been given a suspended sentence these days.

She still did it, and he didn't.

The problem here, is that English law distinguishes between wrongful conviction and miscarriage of justice. They are separate concepts. Ellis was not wrongfully convicted, but arguably wrongly sentenced.

Anyway fans of performative cruelty will be thrilled to know that Mr. Sullivan will have to wait a couple of years before the possibility of seeing any of his capped at £1,000,000 compensation. Plenty of time for the system to find a reason to lock him up again.

The problem here, is that English law distinguishes between wrongful conviction and miscarriage of justice. They are separate concepts. Ellis was not wrongfully convicted, but arguably wrongly sentenced.

No, she was accused of murder, found guilty and sentenced for it. Even today, if she had been tried for murder, she had a useless barrister, who failed to use the diminished responsibility defence, and the jury found her guilty, the judge would have had to follow sentencing guidelines for murder - which would iirc, be a mandatory life sentence. Judges don’t have discretion.

There are two parts to a crime - actus reus and mens rea. I question whether she had mens rea? I suspect she was half out of her mind, given her history and not responsible for what she was doing. Someone else gave her the gun, and showed her how to use it. Imo, he knew her state of mind, and he used her, to take the rap.

A friend of ours is a judge. He tells us, if we were ever to be accused of a crime like murder, keep silent and never confess. A good barrister can argue it down to manslaughter. They can’t, if you have confessed.