Joint enterprise ruling no ‘passport’ to quashing conviction

Lawyers have given a mixed reaction to the Court of Appeal’s decision not to overturn guilty verdicts in a challenge centring on the ‘wrongly interpreted’ joint enterprise law. One solicitor stressed that a much-heralded Supreme Court ruling earlier this year is not a ‘passport to quashing a conviction’. 

In a decision handed down today, the Court of Appeal threw out test cases brought by men convicted of group attacks under the joint enterprise law, despite the fact the Supreme Court ruled in February this year that the law had been wrongly interpreted for more than 30 years.

Advertisement

The challenges were brought by 13 men convicted of six separate offences.

In February, the Supreme Court ruling in R v Jogee said that it was wrong to treat ‘foresight’ as a sufficient test to convict a defendant under joint enterprise. The court said that judges took a ‘wrong turn’ in the 1980s in the way they interpreted the law.

The joint enterprise law had previously meant that defendants would be convicted only if they could have foreseen that a murder or violent act was likely to take place.

But, rejecting the appeals today, Lord Thomas, lord chief justice, said that the Supreme Court’s judgment would ‘not have made a difference’ to the jury’s verdict in the trial of Tyler Burton and Nicholas Terrelonge, found guilty of murder in London in 2014 and that the convictions ‘were and are safe’.

Suzanne Gower, managing director of the Centre for Criminal Appeals, said the ‘disappointing judgment’ would make it harder for individuals and families to achieve justice.

She added: ‘For a prisoner to win their case, comprehensive investigation will be needed to gather evidence that persuades the court a ‘substantial injustice’ has occurred.

‘Put simply, today’s ruling combined with our declining appeals system will prevent injustices from being corrected.’

Mike Schwarz of London firm Bindmans said the judgment will be seen as an attempt to narrow the application of the Supreme Court ruling in Jogee which was credited with giving hope to hundreds of prisoners and their families. 'I expect campaigners and lawyers to mount a rearguard action,' he said. 

But Steven Bird, managing director of UK firm Birds Solicitors and chair of the Criminal Appeal Lawyers Association, said the court has made it clear that the Jogee judgment was not a ‘passport to a quashing of a conviction’.

‘The appellant in any case which relies on the interpretation of the law post-Jogee, will have to show that the change in the law would have made a difference on a consideration of the strength of the evidence presented to the jury,’ he said.

Alison Levitt QC, partner at Mishcon de Reya and former principal legal adviser to the director of public prosecutions, echoed Bird’s view.

‘It has always been the case that a convicted person cannot appeal on the sole basis that there has been a change in the law,’ Levitt said. ‘The law even as clarified by Jogee still leaves substantial room for concern about the position of those who, whilst guilty of murder as a matter of law, in reality played a lesser role.’

She added that parliament should consider whether the offence of murder should be divided into first and second degree murder, where only ‘murder two’ carries a mandatory life sentence and ‘murder two’ could be life imprisonment, with the possibility of a lesser sentence depending on the culpability of the individual.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

Joint enterprise ruling no ‘passport’ to quashing conviction