This is the Guardian.

Today, has an innocent man spent 17 years in prison for a rape he didn't commit.

I woke up after a day of questioning or two days of questioning and the police told me that the victim identified me from the line-up and I just felt the world crashing underneath me.

I couldn't believe it. Being innocent man, I was certain that I wouldn't be selected by the victim, but she did.

Andy Malkinson says he was asleep on his friend's couch in Manchester the night the attack happened.

He was working as a security guard back then and after a long shift he just wanted to relax.

It was just an ordinary day. Nothing remarkable about that particular day whatsoever.

I went to work, I came back, I ate something, I drank a couple of cans of beer and fell asleep. That was it. That's all that happened.

But that night, elsewhere in the city, a woman had been brutally raped.

It was a really, truly horrific attack. So it's the middle of the night in July 2003.

And she was walking home, she'd been at a barbecue and she'd had a fight with her boyfriend and she was walking a very long route home through great a Manchester.

She was attacked by a stranger on a motorway embankment and it wasn't just a rape. He very, very violently attacked her afterwards and left her for dead.

The woman described to police the man who'd raped her and handed over the clothes she'd been wearing.

It wasn't long afterwards that police arrested Andy. He maintained that he was innocent, but he was convicted of rape.

He was a profound shock, horror and I just thought, oh, this is wrong, obviously. I know very well I didn't do that. I know very well. So I'm going to have to spend the rest of my days fighting this to prove that I can't accept this as a lie.

And because he refused to say he was guilty, he ended up serving the next 17 years in prison.

Emily Dugan, a senior reporter for the Guardian, heard about Andy's case when he was still in prison.

In all the time I've been reporting, I don't think I've come across a case that had such clear flaws in it.

There seemed to be a case built up by the police that did appear to have this kind of tunnel vision to it.

Andy's pleaded repeatedly to have his conviction reexamined with no success. He was jailed at 37. He's 57 now.

After all this time, though, there is new evidence that could prove he wasn't to blame.

I think we shouldn't forget in all this that, you know, a horrific rape took place that she will have been deeply traumatised by it.

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