Andrew Malkinson calls for end to majority verdict law

Andrew Malkinson, whose conviction was quashed last year after he was exonerated by DNA tests, made a rare public appearance at the City Law School in Angel, Islington, on Wednesday, May 8.

The event was to launch a report by campaign group Appeal, calling for majority verdicts to be abolished.

The justice charity claims it found majority verdicts were introduced in 1967 for “racist and classist” reasons and have since contributed to dozens of miscarriages of justice.

“It’s a massive tragedy,” said Mr Malkinson, who was convicted by a majority of 10:2 in 2003.

“The risk is that you’re going to convict the innocent and let the guilty go free. Those two people have heard all the evidence and they’re not convinced, so that should be taken into account.

“That’s 17% of the jury, so you’ve only got 83% at the most who are for the conviction. That’s not good enough to get a life sentence. That’s really not good enough.”

Andrew Malkinson, whose rape conviction was quashed after he was exonerated by DNA evidence, was interviewed at City Law School by his lawyer, Appeal's founder Emily Bolton (Image: Charles Thomson)

Mr Malkinson made national headlines when his conviction was quashed after DNA found on a “crime-specific area” of the alleged victim’s body was matched to another man, not him.

The DNA belonged to a man already known to the police and he has since been arrested on suspicion of the rape. Greater Manchester Police have apologised to Mr Malkinson for his wrongful conviction.

A two-year investigation by Appeal’s Naima Sakande and Nisha Waller found Mr Malkinson was one of more than 50 people who had been convicted by majority verdicts but later proved innocent.

By trawling archives, they found evidence that majority verdicts were introduced in direct response to new rules that meant anybody on the electoral roll could serve on a jury.

Previously, only people who owned valuable property had been allowed to sit on juries.

Naima Sakande and Nisha Waller spent two-years researching their report, which calls for the abolition of majority verdicts (Image: Charles Thomson)

“Juries were ultimately white, middle-upper class men at the time,” said Ms Waller.

When the new rules meant women, working classes and ethnic minorities would start regularly serving on juries, MPs expressed concern that they were too stupid.

Ms Waller questioned how the idea of being found guilty beyond reasonable doubt stands up when some jurors believe a defendant is innocent.

She said: “Unless we’re saying that all dissenting jurors are unreasonable, majority verdicts must inherently represent reasonable doubt."

One judge said that “some West Indian bus conductor” shouldn’t be sitting on a fraud jury, and an MP said English “noblemen” should not be tried by “common clay”.

The grounds for introducing majority verdicts was “really troubling”, said Ms Sakande, and based on “pretty explicit racist and classist reasons”.

American attorney-turned-academic Dr Angela Allen-Bell, of Southern University in Baton Rouge, flew from Louisiana to attend the Islington panel event.

Her research found Louisiana had introduced majority verdicts in 1898 for similarly racist and classist reasons.

Dr Angela Allen-Bell, from Southern University in Baton Rouge, uncovered evidence which led to majority verdicts being banned in her state of Louisiana. She flew to Islington for Wednesday's Appeal event (Image: Charles Thomson)

She teamed up with journalists and her university’s Innocence Project to research the issue, finding that over 80% of miscarriages of justice in Louisiana came from majority verdicts.

The investigation saw majority verdicts abolished in Louisiana and the journalists she worked with won a Pulitzer Prize.

“When it comes to these non-unanimous juries, there is a narrative… that somehow, because they’re branded legal, that they’re good; that this is something we should simply accept because the courts accept it.”

But, she said, “There is a danger in accepting a narrative.”

Her project found majority verdicts deterred proper deliberations, with people convicted of murder in under half an hour because 10 or more jurors voted guilty during an initial poll.

In the UK, jurors only have to deliberate for two-and-a-half hours before a judge can accept a majority verdict, the event heard.

Andrew Malkinson said that if majority verdicts had not been introduced in 1967, he would not have spent 17 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. Appeal has uncovered dozens of similar miscarriages of justice (Image: Charles Thomson)

“It was a massive mistake to do what they did in 1967 and it was racist,” said Mr Malkinson. “It was clearly a racist decision and it needs to be reversed.”

“I wouldn’t have been convicted,” he said. “So I would have had a normal life and not spent 20 years fighting to get at the truth while certain state actors deliberately withheld evidence and indeed manufactured evidence and false witnesses.”

But the Ministry of Justice said it was not considering changing the law in response to Appeal’s work.

“Criminal justice policy has been in the toilet, I think, for a series of successive iterations and justice secretaries,” Ms Sakande told the auditorium.

“Really our hope lies with the Law Commission, which recommends law changes to the government.”