England: Man freed after four decades of imprisonment for murder he didn’t commit

The Court of Appeal in London yesterday quashed the murder conviction of Peter Sullivan, who was found guilty in 1987 of the murder of Diane Sindall and given a life sentence.

Mr Sullivan is now 68 years old and has been described by his solicitor as the “longest-serving victim of a miscarriage of justice in the UK”.

Ms Sindall, a newly-engaged 21-year-old who was working part-time as a bartender, was found dead on 2 August 1986 after leaving her place of work in Bebington, Merseyside.

Mr Sullivan applied to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) in March 2021 raising concerns about his interviews by the police, bite mark evidence presented in his trial, and what was said to be the murder weapon.

After consulting experts, the CCRC obtained DNA information from samples taken at the time of the offence. As a result, a DNA profile was obtained which did not match Mr Sullivan and the CCRC sent Mr Sullivan’s conviction to the Court of Appeal.

The Court of Appeal quashed Mr Sullivan’s conviction based on the DNA evidence, but not on the other matters raised.

Mr Sullivan had previously questioned the DNA evidence in an unsuccessful application to the CCRC in 2008.

The techniques used in the testing that led to Mr Sullivan’s case being referred were not available at the time of his first application, the CCRC said.

While alternative techniques available at the time could have been attempted, the body says it is impossible to say whether they would have produced the same result as modern techniques and they could have reduced the opportunities to obtain results using those modern techniques.

When Mr Sullivan applied to the CCRC in 2008, he still had the option to apply directly to the Court of Appeal as he had not applied previously.

Mr Sullivan sought leave to appeal directly in 2019, without CCRC involvement, but this was rejected by the Court of Appeal in 2021.

A spokesperson for the CCRC said: “As the Court of Appeal heard today, the new DNA evidence that has led to Mr Sullivan’s conviction being quashed could not have been available when we first considered his case, and that the decision made then not to send this case back to the courts in 2008 was the correct one.

“However, we do regret that we were not able to identify Mr Sullivan’s conviction as a potential miscarriage of justice in our first review.

“During Mr Sullivan’s application to the CCRC in 2021, we decided to re-visit DNA testing to see if a profile could now be established. The scientific techniques that we relied on in this review were not available at the time of our first review.

“Our purpose is to find, investigate and refer potential miscarriages of justice, and it is imperative that we continue to take opportunities offered by developments in scientific techniques to do that.

“As an organisation we are committed to taking forward learning from previous reviews and we continue to develop our understanding around forensic opportunities.”

Merseyside Police reopened the investigation into Ms Sindall’s murder in 2023 following the CCRC’s referral of the conviction to the Court of Appeal.

Detective chief superintendent Karen Jaundrill said: “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.

“We are committed to doing everything within our power to find whom the DNA, which was left at the scene, belongs to.

“Unfortunately, there is no match for the DNA identified on the national DNA database.

“We have enlisted specialist skills and expertise from the National Crime Agency, and with their support we are proactively trying to identify the person the DNA profile belongs to, and extensive and painstaking inquiries are underway.

“We can confirm that the DNA does not belong to any member of Diane’s family, nor Diane’s fiancé at the time, and we believe it could be a vital piece of evidence linking the killer to the scene.”