A man who served 17 years in prison for a crime he did not commit has said he is “really anxious” about losing his home as a result of receiving compensation. Andrew Malkinson, 59, was wrongly convicted of rape in 2004 and chances to free him were repeatedly missed, leading to one of the worst miscarriages of justice in UK legal history. He received the first payment for the miscarriage of justice he suffered a year and a half after the Court of Appeal finally quashed his conviction but he may now lose access to social housing because the compensation payments are not exempted from the assessment for state support.
Mr Malkinson told the PA news agency on Thursday he fears being forced to leave his home as a result. He said: “I am intensely relieved to finally be getting an interim payment. It still hasn’t really quite sunk in. “It is good news and the implications seem endless, and many are good, but I am really anxious about losing my home. “I got a social housing flat to live in that has been my refuge – you might think it is small but after a prison cell it feels massive.”.
He added: “I understand that in other compensation schemes, payments like this are not counted when they are assessing you for benefits – why should the scheme for people like me who have been effectively kidnapped by the state be any different?. “The Government can fix this, and I hope they do so before I am forced to leave my home, which is just one more thing to worry about.”. Emily Bolton from the legal charity Appeal, which represented Mr Malkinson in challenging his wrongful conviction, said Mr Malkinson struggled to survive on benefits after he was freed from jail.
Ms Bolton added: “It is not just that he had to survive on benefits and handouts – many people face that struggle. “It is that every interaction he has with the state reminds him of his wrongful conviction, even if it is just the DWP (Department for Work and Pensions) demanding he attend a meeting or send in a document. “Andy will never trust the state again – and who can blame him?”. Lawyer Toby Wilton, who represented Mr Malkinson in his claims for compensation, told BBC Radio’s Today programme on Thursday: “There’s another, I think, symptom of successive governments not really having applied their minds to the statutory scheme for miscarriage of justice or as we’ve seen with the CCRC (Criminal Cases Review Commission), to miscarriages of justice.
“And that is that unlike other compensation payments, for example, payments made to victims of the Grenfell Tower fire, payments under the miscarriage justice scheme are not exempted when it comes to assessment for state support. “Which means that just by virtue of having received this very happy news from me that he is has been awarded payments, Andy now faces prospects of losing the social housing that he waited a very long time to be given.”.
Mr Wilton also criticised the £1 million cap on compensation payouts, which was set by the government in 2008. He told BBC Radio’s Today programme: “In today’s money, it would be broadly twice that, two million.”. He further told the PA news agency: “It is good news that the Lord Chancellor has agreed Andy is eligible for compensation under the statutory compensation scheme. “However, unfairness is built into the current scheme, even on top of the arbitrary £1m cap on compensation.”.
Two of Mr Malkinson’s applications to have his case reviewed by miscarriage of justice body the Criminal Cases Review Commission in 2009 and 2020 were rejected, until the Appeal charity commissioned fresh DNA tests that eventually led to his release. It later emerged that he could have been freed a decade earlier if the similarities between his case and another wrongful conviction, that of a man called Victor Nealon, had been spotted and acted upon.
