An alleged rapist suspected of having evaded justice for almost 20 years led to an “exponential” rise in online searches about the case when it emerged police were investigating a new suspect, a court heard.
Paul Quinn, 51, is accused of raping and violently beating a woman in 2003, in an attack that led to the wrongful conviction of Andrew Malkinson.
Malkinson, 60, spent 17 years in prison in what jurors said was one of the worst miscarriages of justice in Britain.
Quinn was arrested in December 2022 when new DNA evidence linked him to saliva on clothing left by a bite that partially severed the victim’s nipple, jurors were told. He denies two counts of rape, one count of attempted strangulation and one count of assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.
A Manchester Crown Court jury heard on Thursday that Quinn researched the case online ahead of a “substantial surge of publicity” about Malkinson’s case.
John Price KC, prosecuting, said of Quinn: “He was someone who had little interest in what might be called news websites. He visited them very rarely.
“But that being the case generally, the evidence shows that there was one news story that did catch his attention and that was Andrew Malkinson’s campaign, and Mr Quinn was aware of it before it became prominent in 2020.”
In September 2019, Quinn sought a 2004 story from the original trial. Minutes later he Googled “wrongful conviction cases in the UK”, jurors were told. Two months later he searched for an article about Malkinson on a website called Justice Gap.
“This was 15 years after the event and three years before he learned of the evidence that made him a suspect,” Price said.
On YouTube, he entered “the police are looking for you” and in October 2021, while living in Exeter, he searched Google Maps for the crime scene, close to where he had lived at the time.
Jurors heard that the Malkinson case “gained new prominence” in July 2022, when The Guardian revealed that a new suspect was implicated in the attack as a result of new DNA analysis.
Price said: “Suddenly the story was not just about Mr Malkinson but also about that other man.”
From that point on there was a “very profound” change in Quinn’s online habits, the jury was told. In the following weeks there was an “exponential increase” in their online news reading. He visited the Manchester Evening News 249 times in the following three months and made more than 200 additional news searches.
Quinn also conducted several searches on “how long DNA is kept in the database” (he had provided a DNA sample to police in 2012) and asked: “why do I keep sweating all the time…why am I sweating so much all of a sudden?”
This was before his arrest on December 13, 2022, when Quinn was first told his DNA had been found on the victim’s clothing, jurors were told. Price said Quinn can claim that his online research simply showed an “understandable interest in press stories about a notorious event that had occurred near where he was then living.”
However, the prosecutor said Quinn did not mention to police his recent interest in the case after his arrest, when he told officers he remembered reading in 2003 that someone had “done it” and he “just forgot about it.”
The jury was told these internet searches were found in Quinn’s online history, but not on the iPhone confiscated by police during his arrest. In police interviews, he repeatedly denied rape and claimed his DNA may have been found because he “slept with literally hundreds of women” in the local area.
Price said: ‘When (his arrest) happened on December 13, 2022, given what he was looking for, did Paul Quinn expect the police to come calling?
“Had he prepared his story in advance about unprotected and unrestricted sexual promiscuity? Did he assume that the person whose DNA had been found was him because he knew it was him?”
Malkinson’s case was referred to the appeal court three times in 17 years before his challenge was allowed in July 2023. He had been released from prison at the end of 2020, the court heard.
The trial continues.
