London - An innocent man was last night enjoying his first taste of freedom in 15 years after being cleared by the Court of Appeal of a brutal rape it said "almost certainly never happened".
Mr Roy Burnett (56), a gardener from Bromley, Kent, was jailed for life at the Old Bailey in 1986 after a jury accepted evidence from a 20-year-old student nurse that she had been raped and seriously assaulted.
Mr Burnett consistently refused to admit guilt and had all his applications for parole turned down, but had no grounds for an appeal until 1998 when the same woman made a false complaint of rape to Devon and Cornwall Police.