The Joint Enterprise Law is currently being extended and applied in such a way that innocent bystanders are being convicted of involvement in serious violent crimes on totally inadequate evidence. London Against Injustice have organised this meeting so that the dangers of this law can be exposed and challenged.
Speakers will include family members of people wrongly convicted, and Dr Andrew Green from INNOCENT, who will make use of individual cases to show how the police and prosecution abuse the law.
MEETING DETAILS:
***THIS MEETING IS NOW FULL*** If you would like to be kept updated, please email London Against Injustice
Tuesday 23 March 2010, 4-6pm in Committee Room 15
Lobby your MP at the lobby desk from 2.00 pm and try to make her/him come to the meeting.
***IMPORTANT *** If you plan to attend, you MUST let the organisers know how many people in your party will attend at London Against Injustice. This is very important as we need to ensure we have a room big enough to accommodate everyone.
Chair:
Bruce Kent, Chairperson of Progressing Prisoners Maintaining Innocence.
Speakers :
* Christopher Sallon QC, Doughty Street Chambers
* Professor Bob Sullivan, Faculty of Law UCL
* Dr Andrew Green, Innocent and UAI
* Patricia Brown, LAI member who will discuss the conviction of her son Tirrell and, Janet Cunliffe, member of Yorkshire & Humberside Against Injustice, will highlight her son Jordan’s case. Both cases are teenagers convicted of murder with life tariffs under joint enterprise.
To download the programme, please click HERE
Invite your MP. Download a template invite to your MP and email it to him/her. You can email your invite to your MP here or alternatively phone your MP.
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March 12, 2010 at 8:40 am
about time people recognise this point of law is wrong and unsafe my husband has served almost thirteen years of a twenty year tariff without having one scrap of evidence either scientific or witnesses to this murder i fought this tirelessly for the first six years it took over my life and cost me thousands of pounds legal fees maybe any changes in this law will be too late for us but i wish you all the best with your campaign
March 19, 2010 at 11:58 am
i am very happy that joint enterprise is finally being challenged as their are many innocent wrongly convicted people put away some on life sentences,when their is insufficient evidence against them. we want fair trials with real evidence, we the people of uk call for joint enterprise to be squashed i have no connection or family ties with prison… but strongly dissagree with joint enterprise WHAT HAPPENED TO HUMAN WRIGHTS please fight hard for this law to change
thank you Mrs S Russ
March 23, 2010 at 5:23 pm
There are people who deserve 5 or 6 years in prison being sentenced to 25 years to life because of this 300 year old ancient law. Bystanders deserve some kind of jail but not life.
March 28, 2010 at 11:31 pm
I thought this was a perfect explanation of JOINT ENTERPRISE and why it is important to change a law that is so pre-dated and should be used to convict people such as Sadam Hussain and the likes of Hitler, not young ‘boys’ who happen to have two or more friends and are considered to be in a gang.
Thanking the organisers in setting up this meeting hopefully one of many more until we can change this out dated law, which is a lazy law for the police who are too lazy to investigate real crime.
Joint enterprise is a law used when the police cannot prove who the perpetrator of the offence was. So for example, you are walking down the street with a friend or relative. Your friend/relative gets into a fight, you’re at the scene watching what is happening obviously thinking that it has nothing to do with you, and it’s not your fight. The fight ends, everyone walks away. The next day, you are arrested on the suspicion of murder, you find out it wasn’t just a fight you witnessed, the person who your friend/relative fought with was fatally stabbed. You tell the police ‘I was there but it wasn’t me’. You feel confident because you played no part, you didn’t know the person was going to be or had been stabbed.
You are then charged jointly with murder! You know you are innocent but it will go to trial. The prosecution will allege that you were part of a common purpose or plan, you were there for encouragement, and you are equally guilty. The prosecution will ask if you knew whether your ‘accomplice’ had a knife, you will of course deny this, you thought it was just a fight. The prosecution will then allege that you should have known what was in your ‘accomplice’s’ pockets because you are best friends or relatives etc. The prosecution will allege you shared the same intent as the murderer; he will go on to trash your defence with his wild speculations during his closing speech. His whole speech will be intent on damaging your character because he has no solid evidence against you, he barely mentions your co-accused, he doesn’t have to, and the evidence presented in court has secured his first conviction. He will save his closing speech all for you, attacking your character and making sure the jury learn that you are no scared little chicken sitting in the back of class too afraid to speak with your school teacher.
But the jury won’t take too much persuading, after all the standard of proof is set frightfully low in joint enterprise law. Your life has been place in the hands of 12 people who don’t know one end of the law from the other. It takes a person 10 years to qualify as a barrister and yet a jury of 12 people with no law experience are expected to understand such complex laws like joint enterprise in 3-4 weeks. The jury will go on to convict you because of one or two things. 1. ‘There’s no smoke without fire’ the prosecution has done his job by attacking your character with totally unwarranted speculations, or 2. They just don’t understand the complex law of joint enterprise or worse, they can’t be bothered to work it out – after all they have sat through a rather lengthy trial. Conviction number 2, good day for the prosecution.
Ok so now you think, ‘I’ll appeal, I know I am innocent’. You will then be told that you can’t appeal on the basis of your innocence. Why? Because jury’s don’t get it wrong. The fight you will have on your hands to over turn your conviction will be way bigger than you can ever imagine. Why? Because the ‘Justice System’ doesn’t like to admit they have made a mistake. You will still fight though there is nothing left for you to do apart from a sentence for a crime you haven’t committed. Things will get a whole lot worse before they get even a smidgen better. The newspapers will print that you are a murderer that you joined in with the fight. They will crush any chance of people believing you, you will feel trapped. Because you keep maintaining your innocence you will stand little chance of parole. Why? Because maintaining your innocence is not showing remorse therefore you are not rehabilitated because you are not sorry for a crime you did not commit.
Someone said to me not long ago that juries should be told how difficult it is to have a murder conviction over turned. Some Juries will more than likely go on to convict under the illusion that if they got it wrong a higher court will correct their mistakes. This is wrong, courts do not like to over turn convictions and admit their perfect system is wrong.
Other people are serving life sentences because of simply using their mobile at the wrong time. Another is serving a life sentence for being a Good Samaritan; unfortunately all he did was offer the wrong person a lift. Another person is serving life because he was asked to burn out a car for the insurance money, little did he know that the car had been used in a murder, and there you have it – another miscarriage of justice.
This is joint enterprise; I know you will probably not believe what you are reading but these things happen, this is real life. If you think Joint Enterprise will never affect you think again! Remember all you have to do is be in the wrong place at the wrong time or even innocently use your own mobile phone. This law is unjust and is crying out for an amendment that will set the standard of proof extremely higher than what it is now. But don’t worry I know you will be thinking this simply couldn’t happen to you….. Could it?
April 12, 2010 at 8:16 pm
my husband is doing 18 year in jail for standing at a door and all over this joint enterprise law. lt was proved in court that he did nothing and didnt kill any one and the jury believed the lies told in court by the wittness. This law should be changed for innocent people who were there but did nothing, shouldnt go to jail for life it is unfair for innocent bystanders to go jail for life. This law has to be changed. l strongly disagree on this joint enterprise law it has to be looked in to for innocent people like my husband who were convicted under this joint enterprise law. thank you. Kathleen.
April 16, 2010 at 11:49 pm
Can I firstly thank LAI for this excellent web site and the ongoing work to fight against this so called Joint Enterprise Law. I have a family member who is currently serving life under the JEL at the age of 15 he was arrested for violence disorder but later charged with Joint Enterprise and along with 3 others he was given life with a minimum tariff of 9 years. There was no evidence to suggest any of the 4 convicted were the ones who gave the fatal blow. “It was even said in court by the Judge we may never know who carried out the stabbing” but yet these 4 innocent young boys have been given life sentences. The knife man is still at large believed to have left the country the following day after the stabbing, he is also on crime stoppers most wanted but 6 years later police have intelligence of his where abouts. Even though he has been seen in Pakistan.
Leeds Beeston Rahman and others v Regina
July 13, 2010 at 12:24 am
My son and his dad are doing a life sentence there was 6 of them charged with murder 1 pleaded guilty to murder the other 3 were aquitted half way through the trial. There was no evidence no forensic the witnesse admitted lying in court they was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. How can three be charged with murder this so called joint enterprise needs to be scraped
thankyou liz
September 8, 2010 at 10:24 am
I was interested to look into the Gary Newlove murder via an item on Radio 5 live. I find it hard to believe, but because we all know the law can be an ass, that Jordan Cunliffe could be found guilty of murder when he is subject to a high degree of blindness. All the stress on “joint enerprise” needs to be better worded and revised so as not to produce any further miscarages of justice. This, and all of the above cases of unfair jail terms need to be re-examinded and swifty overturned if found to be groundless.