Rapist convicted in case that saw Andrew Malkinson wrongly jailed for 17 years
Paul Quinn, 52, was found guilty by a jury of the sex attack on a young mother as she walked home in Little Hulton, Salford, in the early hours of the morning on July 19 2003
A sex offender has been convicted of a brutal rape for which another man spent 17 years in jail after a notorious miscarriage of justice.
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Paul Quinn, 52, was found guilty by a jury of the sex attack on a young mother as she walked home in Little Hulton, Salford, in the early hours of the morning on July 19, 2003.
Andrew Malkinson, working as a security guard at a local shopping centre, protested his innocence but was wrongly picked out at an identity parade and jailed.
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Father-of-six Quinn, a sex offender from the age of 12, was arrested almost two decades later after advances in DNA testing meant in 2022 a billion-to-one match of his profile was made with saliva left on the victim’s vest top.
By then, Mr Malkinson, from Grimsby, North East Lincolnshire, had made multiple failed appeals.
Now aged 60, he was only released in 2020 after 17 years in jail, with his conviction finally quashed by the Court of Appeal in 2023.
Following a six-week trial at Manchester Crown Court, Quinn was convicted on Friday of two counts of rape.
He was also convicted of causing grievous bodily harm and attempting to choke or strangle his victim to render her unconscious while he carried out the attack.
Fallout from the case continues, with a public inquiry now under way after a 2024 review found failings that could have exonerated Mr Malkinson a decade before he was eventually released from prison.
And five former Greater Manchester Police officers and one currently serving with the force are under investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) with both the chair and chief executive of the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) having resigned.
Toby Wilton, Andrew Malkinson's lawyer told Jonathan Ray on LBC News: "Andrew has struggled a great deal, both financially and generally since his release.
"Happily, he has now been accepted onto the statutory scheme to compensate miscarriage of justice victims. But that scheme has a great many problems with it.
"One is that under the scheme, compensation is capped at £1.3 million pounds.
"The Government increased that last year after listening to Mr Malkinson and others' concerns that the cap had stayed the same since it was introduced and hadn't even risen with inflation.
"The Government said, we've listened, we've increased it by £300,000.
"That may sound like a lot of money, but it's not when you think about someone's earnings over a 20-year period. It's not when you think about the impact of 20 years of 17 years of unlawful imprisonment.
"And the Government is happy to increase student loans interest at RPI, but they're not happy to increase miscarriage of justice compensation at the same level."
Mr Wilton, speaking about care for Mr Malkinson going forward, said: "The Ministry of Justice operates a support service for miscarriage of justice victims. But the reality is that without compensation for the sort of medical care and treatment and other assistance that he's going to need, he won't be able to access all of the help that he needs in order to try and rebuild his life."