Peter Sullivan, a man of ‘limited intellectual capacity’ and ‘suggestibility’, has been exonerated after spending 38 years in jail for a murder he didn’t commit. Now aged 68, Sullivan has spent most of his life in high-security jails. DNA evidence has demonstrated that another man was responsible for the brutal assault and murder of 21-year-old Diane Sindall in Birkenhead, Merseyside, in 1986 . How could such a horrific miscarriage of justice happen, and what has Peter endured these past four decades?
Peter has lost the best years of his life
After being arrested, Peter was interviewed without any lawyer present, with the police saying that legal advice would have been ‘a hindrance to the enquiry’. At Peter’s appeal this year, Dr Harry Wood, the psychologist who assessed him, said that he was so vulnerable that had the interview taken place today, he would have been accompanied by an ‘appropriate adult’ as well as a lawyer.
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