The victim of the UK’s longest-running miscarriage of justice faces an agonising potential two-and-a-half-year wait for compensation after spending 38 years in prison for a murder he did not commit.
Peter Sullivan, 68, walked free on Tuesday when his conviction was overturned on new DNA evidence after spending most of his life behind bars for the 1986 murder of 21-year-old Diane Sindall in Bebington, Merseyside.
His lawyer, Sarah Myatt, of Switalskis Solicitors, has said she will support him through any compensation claim if he chooses to make one.
It is possible he could be in line for a maximum of £1m from the Ministry of Justice, which equates to just £26,315 for each year he was wrongly jailed, but experts have warned he faces a lengthy wait in a system which is “not fit for purpose”.
Toby Wilton, who represents Andrew Malkinson in his claim for compensation after he was wrongly jailed for 17 years for rape, said Mr Sullivan is not automatically entitled to compensation and will have to convince the justice secretary Shabana Mahmood that he is innocent beyond reasonable doubt.
For many, this is an insurmountable hurdle, and of 591 applications for compensation from April 2016 to March 2024, only 39 were accepted for payouts, according to government figures.
The sum is then decided by an independent assessor and the process takes an average of 127 weeks – almost two years and six months – from claim to payout.
In Mr Malkinson’s case, he was left struggling to pay for rent and food as he tried to rebuild his life after his release in 2023. He only received an interim payment from the compensation scheme in February this year.
Mr Wilton told The Independent: “It is impossible to understate the impact of miscarriages of justice like this on those involved, and yet the current system for compensating victims of miscarriages of justice is simply not fit for purpose.
“To be eligible for compensation at all under the statutory scheme for miscarriage of justice compensation, Peter Sullivan will have to convince the Secretary of State for Justice that this new DNA evidence shows beyond a reasonable doubt that he did not commit the offence. This reverses the ordinary burden of proof in criminal cases.
“Even if he is able to overcome this hurdle, then the current compensation scheme arbitrarily disadvantages people like Andrew Malkinson and Peter Sullivan, who have suffered the longest and most serious miscarriages of justice, because the total amount of compensation is currently capped at £1m.
“This figure was set in 2008 and would be worth roughly twice as much in today’s money. The secretary of state has the power, under the act, to increase this cap, but they have so far refused to do so.”
Miscarriage of justice charity the Future Justice Project has described the requirement to prove your innocence, introduced by the coalition government in 2014, as an “absurd reversal of the principle that people have the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty”.
A spokesperson added: “This is an insurmountable hurdle for the vast majority of the wrongfully convicted, and has virtually put a stop to compensation payouts for these kinds of miscarriages of justice.
“Even if Mr Sullivan receives compensation for the time he was wrongfully imprisoned, this is capped at £1m – a figure settled on in 2008 that has not increased with inflation.
“Few people could comprehend the toll of being convicted for a crime they did not commit, yet successive governments have seen victims of miscarriages of justice as a target for spending cuts.”
Until recently, victims of miscarriages of justice could also have their living costs in prison deducted from their payout, although this was scrapped by the then-justice secretary Alex Chalk in 2023.
Mr Sullivan was 30 when he was handed a life sentence for Ms Sindall’s brutal murder. Now 68, his conviction was finally quashed at the Court of Appeal on Tuesday at his third attempt to overturn it, after tests revealed his DNA was not present in samples preserved from the crime scene.
In a statement after he was cleared, a Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “Peter Sullivan suffered a grave miscarriage of justice, and our thoughts are with him and the family of Diane Sindall.
“We will carefully consider this judgment, looking at how this could have happened and making sure both Mr Sullivan and Diane’s family get the answers they deserve.”
