The Longest Miscarriage of Justice in Modern UK History: The Peter Sullivan Case

In May 2025, the Court of Appeal overturned the conviction of Peter Sullivan, a 68-year-old man who had spent 38 years in prison for a murder he always said he did not commit.

His release marked the longest known wrongful imprisonment of a living

person in modern British history.

Judges accepted that new DNA evidence rendered the original conviction unsafe, and Sullivan was finally cleared.Sullivan had been found guilty in 1987 of the murder and sexual assault of 21-year- old Diane Sindall in Bebington, Merseyside. Sindall had been attacked while walking home from work in April 1986.

The prosecution relied heavily on circumstantial evidence, including inconsistencies in Sullivan’s early statements and claims that he

had been drinking and acting unpredictably. There was no reliable scientific evidence linking him to the crime, yet the jury convicted him and he received a life sentence.

For decades Sullivan tried to challenge the verdict. His applications to the Criminal Cases Review Commission were repeatedly unsuccessful. In 2008 the Commission concluded that the available forensic techniques could not assist him, and a further request in 2019 also failed.

Throughout his imprisonment he maintained that he had never harmed Sindall and that he had been wrongly accused.

The breakthrough came in 2024 when biological samples from the victim’s clothing were re-examined using modern DNA analysis. The results excluded Sullivan entirely. Instead, they pointed to an unknown male whose profile does not match any existing records. The Crown Prosecution Service accepted that this new evidence fundamentally undermined the basis of the conviction.

Merseyside Police have since reopened the investigation into Sindall’s death. More than 450 men have already been ruled out and the identity of the individual whose DNA was found has not yet been discovered.

Sullivan’s experience raises serious concerns about the appeal process, the

preservation of forensic evidence and the difficulty of correcting entrenched errors. His case is a sobering reminder that miscarriages of justice can endure for almost an entire lifetime.