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.
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.
