A BOLTON man's fight to clear his name after he was convicted of burglary on the strength of a fingerprint is gathering pace after being featured on a TV documentary.
BBC's Panorama last night presented new evidence to support Alan McNamara's claims of innocence as he waits to hear about his second appeal.
The 39-year-old, from Highland Road, Bromley Cross, was jailed for two-and-a-half years following a trial at Manchester's Minshull Street Crown Court.
His first written appeal was rejected in December and he is due to be released in August.
One of his thumbprints was found on a jewellery box at a house in Rochdale which was burgled in May 1999.
But the businessman claims it must have been taken from an item in the house which had been bought in his shop, Pocketsavers, in Bolton.
Fingerprint experts Nicolaas van den Berg, from Holland, and Allan Bayle, who used to work for the Metropolitan Police, also supported Mr McNamara's claim that the impressionmust have come from a smooth surface, rather than the textured jewellery box.
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