Andrew Malkinson has attacked jury majority verdicts, which he blames for his own wrongful conviction, at the launch in May 2024 of a report calling for the reinstatement of jury unanimity.

The legal charity APPEAL has identified at least 56 wrongful convictions in which there was a split verdict, including Winston Trews and Dr David Sellu, who both spoke at the launch of Doubt dismissed: race, juries and wrongful conviction. Other cases include Sally Clark, Stefan Kiszko, Michael O’Brien and Barry George.

Malkinson, who had his conviction overturned last summer, was wrongfully imprisoned for 17 years after being convicted of rape in 2004 on a 10:2 verdict. He pointed out that if it hadn’t been for majority verdicts, he would not have been convicted. ‘It wouldn’t have been permissible,’ he said. ‘I would have had a normal life and not had 20 years fighting to get at the truth while certain state actors deliberately withheld evidence and indeed manufactured evidence and false witnesses.’

Doubt dismissed’s authors, Naïma Sakande and Nisha Waller, argue that majority verdicts – supposedly a safeguard against jury bias – have had a negative impact on the quality of decision-making, eroded the principle of reasonable doubt and increased the risk of wrongful convictions. The report reveals the problematic origins of majority verdicts, which were introduced in this country in 1967 against a ‘backdrop of racism and anti-racist resistance’.

Sakande and Waller draw on contemporary archival research and, in particular, the 1963 Morris Committee, which, for the first time, raised the possibility of majority verdicts after a centuries-old requirement for unanimity. ‘Much of the written evidence highlighted concerns that an expanded jury pool which included the “laboring classes”, immigrants, and “coloureds” would taint the “calibre” of decision-making and educational attitude necessary for jury duty,’ the report explains. The Morris Committee had been launched to look into juror eligibility over concerns about the impact of property re-evaluations increasing the jury pool by almost five times in certain areas, reducing ‘the quality of juries’.

The report quotes one Conservative MP in a parliamentary debate at the time expressing concerns about an English ‘nobleman’ being judged by ‘common clay’, as well as a submission from the Superintendents’ Association of the Police Forces of England and Wales arguing that a member of a jury ‘should not only be a British subject, but should have been born in this country’.

In a rare public appearance since his acquittal, Andrew Malkinson was asked by APPEAL’s founder, Emily Bolton, what it was like being ‘in the dock facing the jury’. ‘It’s is terrifying,’ he said. ‘Even when you know you’re innocent, it’s terrifying. Your whole life is in these 12 strangers’ hands. They don’t know you from Adam. And they’ve only got what the police and the prosecution give them to rely on to make an informed decision, and they can’t make an informed decision when there is deceit, engineering of false witnesses and withholding disclosure. That’s not possible.’

He was asked if he backed APPEAL’s call for a reinstatement of juror unanimity. ‘I totally agree,’ he replied. ‘It was a massive mistake to do what they did in 1967. It was clearly a racist decision.’