UK court quashes murder conviction after man spends 38 years in jail

A British man who spent 38 years in jail for the 1986 murder of a barmaid is set to be released after having his conviction quashed Tuesday by a UK court after new DNA evidence came to light.

Peter Sullivan, 68, is thought to be the country's longest-serving victim of a miscarriage of justice after three judges overturned his conviction, but said after his long legal fight: "I am not bitter".

Sullivan was arrested a month after Diane Sindall, 21, was killed in August 1986 and found dead in Bebington, near Liverpool in northwest England.

She had been returning home from work, when she was attacked, sexually assaulted and beaten to death in a killing which sent shockwaves through the area.

Sullivan was just 30 when he was convicted in 1987 and his two past attempts to appeal against his sentence failed. He has been serving his sentence at Wakefield prison.

But on Tuesday his lawyers told the Court of Appeal that new evidence based on semen samples found on the victim's body showed the killer "was not the defendant".

Lawyers for the Crown Prosecution Service which brought the case against Sullivan said the new evidence meant there was "no credible basis on which the appeal can be opposed".

It was "sufficient fundamentally to cast doubt on the safety of the conviction", they added.

Sullivan, who wept as the judges dismissed his conviction, said in a statement read outside the court by his lawyer, that despite spending years in jail he was "not angry" or "bitter".

"I lost my liberty four decades ago over a crime I did not commit," he 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."

Sullivan's lawyer said the semen sample was analysed in 2024 in tests not available in the mid-1980s and was found not to be a DNA match for Sullivan.

"The prosecution case is that ... it was one person who carried out a sexual assault on the victim, said lawyer Jason Pitter.

"The evidence here is now that one person was not the defendant," he added.

Detective Chief Superintendent Karen Jaundrill said police were now appealing for more information in a renewed bid to solve the murder, as DNA tests had also ruled out that Sindall's killer was a relative or her fiance.

Sullivan's sister, Kim Smith, said after the hearing: "Peter hasn't won and neither has the Sindall family.

"They've lost their daughter, they are not going to get her back."