Campaigners today will launch a new campaign pushing for legislation to fix the injustice of joint enterprise six years after the Supreme Court ruled that the law had taken ‘a wrong turn’. It was widely anticipated that there would be a significant number of successful appeals following the ruling in the case of Jogee in February 2016 in which the court said it was ‘the responsibility of this court to put the law right’ however that has not happened.
JENGbA (Joint Enterprise Not Guilty by Association) is due to launch a private members Bill online. The group points out that to date only one person has had their murder conviction quashed post-Jogee – see here. Shortly after the Jogee ruling, the Court of Appeal effectively closed off the prospects of a successful appeal by ruling that such challenges needed to demonstrate a ‘substantial injustice’ prior to any leave for appeal being granted. It was that test that became an unsurpassable hurdle.
‘In practice, the substantial injustice test is exceedingly difficult to meet,’ says JENGbA. ‘In criminal trials, juries do not give reasons for their decisions, meaning that there is no way of knowing what evidence the jury believed as fact when they convicted the defendant. Subsequently, the applicant is tasked with disproving even the most tenuous link to the crime in order to prove they are innocent.’
You can join JENGbA today for the online launch (here). Speakers include campaigner, lawyer and author of the bill, Charlotte Henry; JENGbA co founder Gloria Morrison; barrister Felicity Gerry QC who represented Ameen Jogee; solicitor Dean Kingham (Lawyer); Tim Caines, ex-Joint Enterprise prisoner; Helen Mills, for the Centre for Crime and Justice studies; and academics Patrick Williams and Becky Clarke.
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