We represented a client whose joint enterprise murder conviction has been referred to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC). This referral was secured following a new legal argument and psychiatric evidence.
Our client was convicted in December 2012 at the Central Criminal Court for murder and violent disorder. He was only 16 at the time of the offence.
The case concerned the death of a 17-year-old young man in August 2011 at a private party in a club in Ilford. The prosecution alleged that our client and his co-defendants had acted together in a joint enterprise to attack the victim or his friends. A single stab wound caused the fatal injury.
Following extensive representations and fresh psychiatric evidence, the CCRC has concluded that there is a real possibility the conviction will not be upheld, and referred it to the Court of Appeal.
This referral arises on two grounds:
- A pre-Jogee misdirection has caused a substantial injustice
- New psychiatric evidence which would have assisted the jury in assessing our client’s understanding and behaviour at the time of the offence.
The conviction predated the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in R v Jogee [2016] UKSC 8, which confirmed that the law on joint enterprise had been wrongly applied for years.
Our client was represented by Dr Laura Janes KC (Hon), Consultant at GT Stewart and Pippa Woodrow of Doughty Street Chambers.
Read the CCRC’s press release here.
