A 68-year-old man who has spent 38 years in jail has had his murder conviction quashed at the court of appeal in what is thought to be the longest-running miscarriage of justice in British history, SİA informs via The Guardian.
Peter Sullivan was wrongly convicted in 1987 for the frenzied murder of a florist and part-time pub worker, Diane Sindall, 21, who was killed as she left work in Bebington, Merseyside.
It was alleged that in August 1986, Sullivan had spent the day drinking heavily after losing a darts match and went out armed with a crowbar before a chance encounter with Sindall.
Her florist van had broken down on her way home from a pub shift and she was walking towards petrol station when she was beaten to death and sexually assaulted. Her body was left partly clothed and mutilated.
Sullivan has always protested his innocence and lawyers have tried twice before to get his conviction overturned.
In a statement read by his lawyer Sarah Myatt outside the court on his behalf, Sullivan said too many horrors had been inflicted on him to detail.
“As God is my witness, it is said the truth shall take you free,” he said. “It is unfortunate that it does not give a timescale as we advance towards resolving the wrongs done to me, I am not angry, I am not bitter. I am simply anxious to return to my loved ones and family as I’ve got to make the most of what is left of the existence I am granted in this world.”
New tests ordered by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) revealed that Sullivan’s DNA was not present on samples preserved at the time.
Duncan Atkinson KC, for the Crown Prosecution Service, told the court of appeal that analysis of the DNA showed it came from someone known as “unknown male one”, and that it was “one billion times more likely that the sample originated from unknown male one, rather than someone else, and it did not match the appellant”.
He said: “Had this DNA evidence been available at the time a decision was taken to prosecute, it is difficult to see how a decision to prosecute could have been made.”
Quashing the conviction, Lord Justice Holroyde, sitting with Mr Justice Goss and Mr Justice Bryan, said: “In the light of that evidence, it is impossible to regard the appellant’s conviction as safe.”
Sullivan, who attended the hearing via video link from HMP Wakefield, listened to the ruling with his head down and arms folded, and appeared to weep and put his hand to his mouth as his conviction was quashed.
As the judgment was read out, his sister Kim Smith tearfully declared: “We’ve done it.”
Outside court, she said: “We lost Peter for 39 years and at the end of the day it’s not just us, Peter hasn’t won and neither has the Sindall family. They’ve lost their daughter, they are not going to get her back.”
Merseyside police said the crucial DNA evidence was not available during the original investigation and officers were now “committed to doing everything” to find the person whose DNA was left at the scene where Diane Sindall died.
Det Ch Supt Karen Jaundrill said that more than 260 men had been screened and eliminated from the investigation since it was reopened in 2023.
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