Peter Sullivan has murder conviction quashed after 38 years in prison

** Peter Sullivan has murder conviction quashed after 38 years in prison. **

A man who has spent 38 years in prison for the murder of barmaid Diana Sindall in 1986 has had his conviction quashed.

A man who has spent 38 years in prison for the murder of a woman in 1986 has had his conviction quashed at the Court of Appeal.

Peter Sullivan, who was 30 when he was sentenced and is now 68, is believed to be the UK’s longest-serving victim of a miscarriage of justice after three senior judges quashed his conviction for the killing, 17 years after his first attempt to have it overturned.

Diane Sindall, a 21-year-old barmaid, was found dead in Bebington, Merseyside, in August 1986, with Sullivan arrested the following month and convicted in November 1987, but has remained behind bars despite being given a minimum term of 16 years.

He first tried to challenge his conviction in 2008, with the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) declining to refer the case to the Court of Appeal, before he lost his own appeal bid in 2019.

He again asked the CCRC to refer his case in 2021, and the commission found that DNA samples taken from the scene did not match Sullivan.

At a hearing on Tuesday, lawyers for Sullivan told the Court of Appeal in London that the new evidence showed that Sindall’s killer “was not the defendant”.

Barristers for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) told the court that there was “no credible basis on which the appeal can be opposed” related to the DNA evidence, as it was “sufficient fundamentally to cast doubt on the safety of the conviction”.

Quashing the conviction, Lord Justice Holroyde, sitting with Mr Justice Goss and Mr Justice Bryan, said they had “no doubt that it is both necessary and expedient in the interests of justice” to accept the new DNA evidence.

He said: “In the light of that evidence, it is impossible to regard the appellant’s conviction as safe.”

Sullivan, who attended the hearing via video link from HMP Wakefield, listened to the ruling with his head down and arms folded, and appeared to weep and put his hand to his mouth as his conviction was quashed.

A relative in court wept as the judgment was read out.