A sex offender has been found guilty of a rape which saw an innocent man jailed for 17 years.
Paul Quinn, 52, had denied the attack on a woman in Little Hulton, Salford, in 2003 for which Andrew Malkinson was wrongly convicted.
Jurors at Manchester Crown Court heard the father-of-six's DNA was found on the woman's vest and he had searched online to see how long police kept samples.
Quinn, of Exeter, Devon, and formerly of Little Hulton, Salford, was also found guilty of strangulation and grievous bodily harm.
Warning: This story contains distressing details.
The court heard Quinn, a sex offender from the age of 12, attacked the young mother as she walked home in the Salford suburb in the early hours of the morning on 19 July 2003.
She was brutally beaten, bitten and her cheekbone was fractured.
Quinn then strangled her unconscious and raped her.
Malkinson, who was working as a security guard at a local shopping centre, had protested his innocence but was wrongly picked out at as the attacker in an identity parade.
He was jailed in 2004.
Speaking after Quinn's conviction, Malkinson said he was "content that the right result has finally been achieved for the victim, myself and the public".
"But the truth is that if the police had acted as they should have done, Paul Quinn could have been caught a long time ago," he said.
"Instead, they wanted a quick conviction and I was a handy patsy forced to spend over 17 years in prison for his horrific crime."
Malkinson, from Grimsby, made multiple failed appeals against his conviction in 2012 and 2020.
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.
A statement read on behalf of the victim on the court steps said "two lives had been impacted" by the case.
It had "robbed me of the life I wanted to have" and the miscarriage of justice had "robbed Mr Malkinson of 17 years", she said.
However, she said "justice has been served" by this verdict.
Assistant Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police (GMP) Steph Parker said: "The fact that Andrew Malkinson was imprisoned for 17 years for a crime he didn't commit is clearly a failing of Greater Manchester Police, and the wider criminal justice system.
"And for that, we are absolutely sorry.
"We are determined that this cannot happen again and we also offer our apologies to the victim, who we've let down."
Opinion: Those who advocate for castration of convicted rapists; unfortunately, this and many other innocent people could suffer irreversible damage for crimes they know absolutely nothing about.
Source: BBC
