Downing is freed on bail
Stephen Downing, jailed 27 years ago for a murder he says he did not commit, was today freed on bail by the Court of Appeal.
Downing, 44, was released from Littlehey prison in Cambridgeshire to await the hearing of an appeal against his conviction and life jail sentence for the brutal killing of married typist Wendy Sewell.
Her badly-beaten body was found in a cemetery where he worked in his home town of Bakewell, Derbyshire.
Bail was not opposed by the Crown, which conceded that the appeal was "highly likely" to succeed in the light of serious questions raised over the admissibility of Downing's confession statements which formed a main plank of the prosecution case.
Downing was 17 at the time of the killing but had the mental age of an 11-year-old.
He has consistently denied murder and so has been ineligible for parole, which could have given him freedom 10 years ago.
The Criminal Cases Review Commission referred his case to the Court of Appeal after years of campaigning by his parents, Ray and Juanita, and by Don Hale, editor of the local newspaper the Matlock Mercury.
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