He did not commit. A man who was wrongly imprisoned for rape has welcomed a government decision to scrap rules which meant people who had been cleared by the courts could be charged for living costs incurred injail. Andrew malkinson told the bbc the change was a step in the right direction, but said more needed to be done to support people who were wrongly convicted. Hes been talking to our reporterjoe inwood. He started by telling him how he felt when he was first told he had to pay for his living costs whilst in prison out of his compensation. It seems like a sickjoke. I thought what is the justification for paying the Prison Service because they dont treat you well in prison, they really dont. You should lose your liberty, you shouldnt be tortured by them. I thought, to pay these people for doing what they are doing to me is the most sickening, horrifying, repugnant thing i could imagine. When you were speaking and made this point and express yourself so eloquently that there was a
of compensation. just to explain how the process works, somebody is - the process works, somebody is wrongfully convicted you need to go through another legal procedure in order to notjust prove that the conviction was not safe but to prove beyond reasonable doubt that you are innocent. now, this was a new test introduced by 2014 by the then coalition government. andy s lawyer said it is an amazingly hard test to pass. andy probably will pass because there was dna evidence of another person which means you can prove it wasn t him. the lawyer was telling him there are lots and lots of people now who had been wrongfully convicted, the conviction was unsafe but they cannot prove beyond reasonable doubt it was not them so they don t get any compensation. so what andy now faces even though he has got this very, very high profile clearing of his name, he still needs to go to a legal procedure which they say will take a couple of years and, at that point, once it has been proved that he is in