Summary

  • Warning: This page contains some distressing details

  • Paul Quinn is due to be sentenced over a 2003 rape, for which Andrew Malkinson wrongly served 17 years in prison

  • Quinn, 52, was found guilty of rape, strangulation and grievous bodily harm at a trial in April

  • Jurors at Manchester Crown Court heard how he attacked a young mother as she walked home in an area of Salford, Greater Manchester in the early hours of 19 July 2003

  • Malkinson, now 60, was convicted after being picked out at a police identity parade - he was released in 2020 and had his conviction quashed in 2023

  • Quinn was arrested in 2022 after advances in DNA testing meant a billion-to-one match of his DNA profile was made with saliva left on the victim's vest top

  • Following Quinn's conviction, a statement read outside court on behalf of the victim said the case had "robbed me of the life I wanted to have"

Live Reporting

Edited by Jenna Moon and Andrew Humphrey

  1. What will happen during today's sentencing?

    Dominic Casciani
    Home and legal correspondent

    A sentencing of any offender is a very formal and structured court hearing.

    Judges follow both the laws agreed by MPs in Parliament on the sentences for particular crimes - and then the detailed guidelines developed down the decades about how best to apply those in specific circumstances.

    Mr Justice Bright presided over the case and therefore knows all of the evidence. He saw the victim of the attack give her account in person and saw for himself how Quinn denied that he could be the attacker.

    The prosecution team will tell the judge what category of offending the crime falls into - and the defence barristers will speak on Quinn’s behalf about factors in his favour. The one thing he will not get is a discount on the sentence which is always given to offenders who admit their crimes early, so as to spare everyone the pain of a trial.

    The judge will have to decide how much harm Quinn caused and how personally responsible, or “culpable” he was. Those findings then lead him to what’s called a “starting point” for years in prison.

    The judge will then take into account other aggravating and mitigating factors. All of this will lead the judge to his final decision - the sentence.

  2. How Andrew Malkinson was wrongly convicted

    Andrew Malkinson wearing a #innocent t-shirt and holding up a fistPA Media

    Malkinson was blamed for the attack in one of the worst miscarriages of justice this century

    Andrew Malkinson spent 17 years in prison after he was wrongly convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2004 for the rape. His conviction was only overturned in 2023 in light of compelling DNA evidence identifying Quinn as the true attacker.

    At the time of the attack, Malkinson had been living temporarily in the area of the attack in Salford because of a short-term job. Police saw him as a prime suspect because he had been stopped by two officers some time earlier.

    He was wrongly picked out at as the attacker in an identity parade, and in 2004, a jury convicted Malkinson solely on the basis of eyewitness accounts.

    From the day of his arrest, he protested his innocence. From around 2007, England's criminal justice agencies should have started to realise he was telling the truth - read why here.

    New evidence revealed that when the victim first saw Malkinson in court, after he had been charged, she had doubts she had picked out the right man. A police officer dismissed this as "just trial nerves". It's not clear who this officer was - she cannot remember.

    Malkinson told the BBC's Shadow World: Stolen Years podcast last month that he had been "very badly cheated" and that he was thankful police had "finally got the real perpetrator".

  3. Who is Paul Quinn?

    A mug shot taken of Paul Quinn.Greater Manchester Police

    The 52-year-old formerly lived in Little Hulton, Salford, where he committed the crime. He is a divorced father of six, who left the city in 2016 following a drugs dispute.

    He then moved to Exeter, Devon, where he worked as a delivery driver before his arrest in December 2022.

    When questioned by police, he said that, for about 16 years from the age of 18, he had a party lifestyle and would take ecstasy pills and other drugs and sleep with two or three women each weekend.

    At his trial, the court heard that Quinn was a convicted sex offender at the time of the attack. He was cautioned in 1986 for two counts of indecent assault against a female, when he was 12 years old.

    In November 1992, he was convicted of two counts of underage sex, an offence which today would be classified as rape. He was aged 16 and the girl was 12 at the time of the offences.

    In April of this year, Quinn was also found guilty of strangulation and grievous bodily harm.

  4. Paul Quinn to be sentenced for rape decades after innocent man wrongfully convicted

    Paul Quinn will be sentenced today for a violent rape he committed in 2003, more than two decades after an innocent man was wrongly jailed for 17 years for the crime.

    Andrew Malkinson was wrongly convicted after being misidentified in an identity parade, leading to what has been characterised as one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British history.

    Advances in DNA testing ultimately helped identify Quinn as the real perpetrator. Malkinson was released in 2020 and finally exonerated in 2023.

    We'll bring you updates here from Manchester Crown Court throughout the sentencing.