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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
