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Several dozen murder and rape convictions in England, Wales and Northern Ireland could receive a new DNA test after a man was wrongly jailed for more than 17 years.
The Criminal Cases Review Commission, the body responsible for investigating potential miscarriages of justice, is reviewing thousands of cases it had previously rejected to see whether advances in DNA technology could change the outcome, the CCRC said on Monday.
The body identified 5,500 murder or rape convictions before 2016 that it had refused to take up. While the identity of the perpetrator is undisputed in most of these cases, about a quarter will be considered for a new forensic examination, with several dozen potentially at risk of retesting, the agency said.
The review comes after Andrew Malkinson, convicted of rape in 2004, was acquitted last year. Malkinson’s case has been rejected twice by the CCRC, which has refused to obtain new DNA tests, according to the Appeal, a charity representing Malkinson.
“This announcement is a stunning admission that, after failing to carry out DNA testing in the case of Andrew Malkinson, the CCRC may also have denied justice to hundreds of other innocent people,” Emily Bolton said in a statement , Malkinson criminal appellate attorney at Appeal.
The charity also criticized the review for being too limited in scope by not including cases of attempted murder and sexual assault.
All cases that the CCRC now considers eligible will be tested using a technique known as DNA-17, which has been used in UK laboratories since 2014. Before this, the tests were probably less sensitive. Even samples that are old, degraded, or contain only a very small amount of cellular material are more likely to produce useful results using this method.
“The CCRC has been operational for more than 27 years and scientific advances mean there may be new forensic opportunities in cases we last examined several years ago,” the body said in a statement. “This trawl is a significant task and is the first we have undertaken on this scale. It could take a long time.”
The CCRC has asked the Ministry of Justice for additional funding to complete the review.
Another analysis, led by barrister Chris Henley KC, of the CCRC’s handling of the Malkinson case will be published in the coming weeks.
The CCRC is often the last opportunity for an offender to have their case sent back to court after it has been rejected in an initial appeal. Tom Hayes, the former UBS and Citigroup trader convicted of manipulating Libor, lost his appeal last month after a referral from the CCRC.