A British man is walking free after spending nearly 40 years in prison for a wrongful murder conviction, thanks to advancements in DNA testing techniques, which cast doubt on his guilt.
Peter Sullivan was sentenced to life in 1987 for the murder of 21-year-old Diane Sindall, who was found dead after leaving her place of work in the town of Bebington in England's north-west the previous year.
Now aged 68, Mr Sullivan is thought to be the victim of the country's longest miscarriage of justice involving a living prisoner, having spent 38 years, seven months and 21 days in custody.
His release comes after the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), an independent body that investigates potential miscarriages of justice, referred his case back to the appeal court last year.
The commission had obtained DNA information from forensic samples obtained from Ms Sullivan's body and found the profile did not match that of Mr Sullivan.
His case was then sent to London's Court of Appeal, which quashed the conviction on Tuesday, local time, based on the new evidence.
"This is an unprecedented and historic moment," his lawyer Sarah Myatt told reporters outside the court.
"Our client Peter Sullivan is the longest-serving victim of a miscarriage of justice in the UK."
Reading a message from Mr Sullivan, the lawyer said: "What happened to me was very wrong, but it does not detract or minimise that all of this happened off the back of a heinous and most terrible loss of life."
"The truth shall set you free.
"As we advance towards resolving the wrongs done to me, I am not angry, I am not bitter."
Murder of Diane Sindall
Ms Sindall was attacked while walking to a petrol station around midnight on August 1, 1986.
The 21-year-old had just finished working a shift behind the bar at the Wellington pub in town that night when her blue Fiat van ran out of petrol on the way home.
Several witnesses at the time saw her getting out of her van and walking along the side of a road.
Twelve hours later, her body was discovered in an alleyway with extensive injuries.
Her cause of death was established as a cerebral haemorrhage following multiple blows, and it was determined she had been sexually assaulted.
The day after her murder, her clothes were found burning on nearby Bidston Hill.
According to the BBC, Mr Sullivan first became a suspect in the case after a witness reported a man who they recognised as "Pete" fleeing near the site of the fire.
Semen found on Ms Sindall's body could not be scientifically analysed until recently.
"The prosecution case is that it was one person. It was one person who carried out a sexual assault on the victim,” defence attorney Jason Pitter said.
"The evidence here is now that one person was not the defendant."
Merseyside Police, which reopened the investigation in 2023, said there was no match for the forensic evidence left at the scene on the national DNA database, adding that they were committed to doing "everything within our power" to find to whom it belonged.
The police said more than 260 other men have since been screened and eliminated from investigations.
"Our thoughts remain with the family and friends of Diane Sindall who continue to mourn her loss and will have to endure the implications of this new development so many years after her murder," Detective Chief Superintendent Karen Jaundrill said.
"Diane's murder sent shock waves through Birkenhead when it happened and I would appeal to anyone who lived in the area at the time, and has any information which could help us with our inquiries, to come forward.
"We believe there are people who have information, or suspicions, about the murder of Diane in 1986 and I would appeal to those people to come forward, as the information they have could be key to finding who the DNA belongs to."
Previous application rejected
Mr Sullivan was initially denied legal representation after his arrest, and confessed to the murder of Ms Sullivan before retracting.
He has since protested his innocence.
He applied to the CCRC in 2008, questioning DNA evidence, but forensic experts advised at the time that any further testing would be very unlikely to produce a DNA profile.
The techniques used in the testing that led to his case being referred were not available at the time of his first application, the CCRC said.
"Alternative techniques available at the time could have been attempted but it is impossible to say whether they would have produced the result that modern ones have," the commission said in a statement.
"Using those techniques at the time might have reduced the opportunities to obtain results using modern technologies."
A CCRC spokesperson said in a statement the commission regrets it was not able to identify Mr Sullivan's conviction as a potential miscarriage of justice in its first review.
"As an organisation we are committed to taking forward learning from previous reviews and we continue to develop our understanding around forensic opportunities," the spokesperson said.
Mr Sullivan sought leave to appeal his conviction directly in 2019, without CCRC involvement, but this was rejected by the Court of Appeal in 2021.
At the time, the court determined bitemark evidence, on which Mr Sullivan was appealing his conviction, was not central to the prosecution at trial.
When Mr Sullivan re-applied, the CCRC decided to revisit the possibility of DNA testing, which led to the conviction being quashed this week.
Mr Sullivan's sister, Kim Smith, reflected outside the court on the toll the case had taken on two families.
"We lost Peter for 39 years and at the end of the day it’s not just us," she said.
"Peter hasn’t won and neither has the Sindall family. They’ve lost their daughter, they are not going to get her back.
"We've got Peter back and now we’ve got to try and build a life around him again."
ABC/Reuters/AP
