TEN years have passed since the victim of a gross miscarriage of justice was cleared of the attempted murder of a nine-year-old boy in Warrington.

Paul Blackburn, now aged 51, was only 14 when he was arrested for the attempted murder of a young boy in June 1978.

The victim was attacked, stripped of his clothes and buried in a five foot deep shaft at disused filter beds near the Nine Arches railway bridge in Newton.

After his trial at Chester Crown Court in December 1978, Mr Blackburn was jailed for life and served 25 years in jail in around 20 different prisons for a crime he has always maintained he did not commit.

It was these persistent protests of innocence that clearly prolonged his detention.

Mr Blackburn's solicitor Glyn Maddock said: "It was an incredibly sad case because the best years of his life were spent in prison.

"He came out very damaged and he went through around 20 prisons and the experiences he had in the those prisons don’t bear thinking about.

"He was an incredibly strong willed character and he refused to go on any offender behaviour programmes or courses because he said I’m not an offender I have not done it - why should I face up to my offending behaviour when I have not done anything wrong?"

But in 2005, Lord Justice Keene ruled at the Royal Courts of Justice that Mr Blackburn's conviction was 'unsafe' and listed a large number of procedural irregularities in the obtaining of a confession from the then 15-year-old by officers in Cheshire Police.

Linguistic evidence suggested significant police involvement in the wording of Mr Blackburn's written admissions in July 1978.

This is despite officers involved in the case previously telling a court they had not aided Mr Blackburn, who was released on licence in March 2003, as he wrote the confession.

Mr Maddock said: "The two police officers in evidence said they stood at the back of the room and he wrote it out himself.

"In other words they perjured themselves. They should have been prosecuted.

"The police were under an awful lot of pressure and the national newspapers had picked it up because it was a horrific crime.

"The police investigation was massive and I think they took more than 2,000 statements.

"They had to find someone as quickly as they can."

Decades on from the attack on the young boy, the culprit has yet to be arrested.

Mr Maddock added: "The other side of the coin to the miscarriage of justice is the real perpetrator is still out there.

"As Paul didn’t do it then someone else did.

"That person was never charged and never convicted and possibly went on to commit other crimes."

CHANGES to rules relating to the questioning of suspects and admission of evidence are very different to those in force in 1978, a police chief has said.

Assistant chief constable Guy Hindle said: “We remain very concerned that Mr Blackburn served a term of imprisonment in light of the fact that the Court of Appeal went on to rule the convictions unsafe based on the duration and style of the interview.

“An independent investigation was conducted in 1996 which was satisfied with the conduct of the officers involved and concluded that there was no evidence to pursue criminal proceedings against the officers concerned.

“This case occurred 37 years ago when the rules relating to the questioning of suspects and admission of evidence were very different to today’s standards.

“The Police and Criminal Evidence Act introduced in 1986 fundamentally changed the way we treat suspects.  

“Since that time we have continued to improve our treatment of detainees in police custody, particularly those who are vulnerable are young.”