On the 2nd of July 2011, 15 year old boy was chased by a group of youths near Gipsy Hill Road in South London. Zac Olumegbon was then brutally stabbed to death within a few meters of his school gates. In December the Old Bailey ruling saw 17 year old knife man Ricardo Giddings jailed for a minimum of 18 years. 18 year old Kyle Kinghorn and Helder Demorais, 17 both received a minimum of 16 years, whilst Shaquille Haughton a 12 year sentence. The 5th member was 17 year old Jermael and although not proven guilty for killing the victim, was convicted to serve a minimum of 14 years under the legal principle of joint enterprise.
Jermael's mother Sonia Moore, is adamant that her son had no idea of what was going to happen the fatal day Zac lost his life. Ms Moore told South London Press “I was the one who brought my son into the police station. It was a difficult decision but I knew my son and I knew he was not capable of murder.” “When the police charged him for murder on joint enterprise, that was the first time I had heard about it."
The Met’s senior investigating officer, Detective Chief Inspector John McFarlane was reported to have said: “This case must act as a deterrent to other young people who think they will not be prosecuted or go to prison just because they did not deliver the fatal blow". The legal term "joint - enterprise" indicates that anyone who agrees to commit a crime with another individual is also liable for the crime commited.
Earlier this month Stephen Lawrence killers Gary Dobson and David Norris were successfully convicted under the law after nearly 19 years due to new DNA evidence. Committee chairman Sir Alan Beith stated that “This area of law is vital to ensuring the prosecution and conviction of criminals involved in gang-related violence in particular...”
However Ms Moore, who still lives in South London felt that “There is nothing positive about this joint enterprise to me. Why should you charge someone for a murder they did not commit? “To them, it seems easier to throw the net over the lot of them. That is one less problem." The 43-year-old is also a member of the Joint Enterprise: Not Guilty By Association (JENGbA) campaign.
Jermael's mother Sonia Moore, is adamant that her son had no idea of what was going to happen the fatal day Zac lost his life. Ms Moore told South London Press “I was the one who brought my son into the police station. It was a difficult decision but I knew my son and I knew he was not capable of murder.” “When the police charged him for murder on joint enterprise, that was the first time I had heard about it."
The Met’s senior investigating officer, Detective Chief Inspector John McFarlane was reported to have said: “This case must act as a deterrent to other young people who think they will not be prosecuted or go to prison just because they did not deliver the fatal blow". The legal term "joint - enterprise" indicates that anyone who agrees to commit a crime with another individual is also liable for the crime commited.
Earlier this month Stephen Lawrence killers Gary Dobson and David Norris were successfully convicted under the law after nearly 19 years due to new DNA evidence. Committee chairman Sir Alan Beith stated that “This area of law is vital to ensuring the prosecution and conviction of criminals involved in gang-related violence in particular...”
However Ms Moore, who still lives in South London felt that “There is nothing positive about this joint enterprise to me. Why should you charge someone for a murder they did not commit? “To them, it seems easier to throw the net over the lot of them. That is one less problem." The 43-year-old is also a member of the Joint Enterprise: Not Guilty By Association (JENGbA) campaign.
Having grown up in an area not so far away from Gipsy Hill and from my experience of growing up within South London I know too well how easy it is to be tarnished by your association in the eyes of the law. My current questioning of the use of joint enterprise is not to take away from the appalling crimes committed or to take away responsibility from individuals who socialise with gang members.
From general understanding of the law; murder would require two main factors:
- The act of taking another's life, and the intention to do so
- Or to cause "really serious harm"
Arguably anything less or in between may not necessarily suggest innocence - but with the array of assault and public disorder offences available to deal with group crime, the use of the murder verdict collectively for prosecuting may not always be appropriate or fair.
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How pleasant it must be to reside in such a cosseted world where the boundaries between guilt and innocence are so conveniently and neatly clarified. One where the burden of proof for a prosecution can be whittled down to the company a person keeps at any given time.
ReplyDeleteI suppose in pebbled drive suburbia such distinctions between right and wrong are clearly marked and plain to see but for the rest of society I'd suggest reality simply isn't as cut and dry as you make it appear.
Do all your friends and acquaintances have clean criminal records? Are you able to predict their behaviour or reaction to alcohol and drugs? Could you have done on your first night out with school friends aged 15-18? Because experimentation with alcohol and drugs that can dramatically change a teenager's personality in an instant from college graduate high achiever to frothing psychopath in the blink of an eye.
So how can anyone at any time be 100% liable for the actions of the people they happen to be socialising with at any given time? When you're young friends come and go with the breeze and you can easily find yourself in a nightclub with people you have only met a few hours previously. It goes with the territory and life would be a rather plodding and arduous journey if you were going to have to text or e-mail the Criminal Record Bureau or swipe a piece of someone's hair every time you came across a new acquaintance in a bar or a nightclub.
Where I grew up drunken brawls were practically a rites of passage. Very often no-one could remember what or how an argument started at a particular bus stop or train station but inevitably they did and usually a couple of hotheads were all that was needed to light the fuse for all out chaos. A lot of these incidents vary from the downright dangerous to the tragically absurd.
A lot of these people that were involved in such brawls as a teen were happy to be involved and actually thrived in these situations. Personally I can think of much better ways to spend a Saturday night but life isn't always that simple. It only takes a blink of an eye or a second for someone to throw a punch or attack you as you wait for a cab or at a bus stop and when violent situations do erupt they can be extremely frightening, unpredictable and confusing situations to be in.
I know it may be hard for someone growing up in a pleasant; cotton wool absorbed and privileged middle-class existence to understand. But a lot of children realise and learn very quickly that random and senseless violence is a depressing but undeniable part of everyday life. A part of life that sadly most of us are bound to face in at some time or another.
Some of the people I saw involved in such situations over the years have indeed eventually ended up serving long prison sentences. Some have changed and calmed down. Some have been sucked into the revolving door circuit of prison, institutions and a downward spiral of criminality that gets harder to break out of as the years roll by. Others are today working as computer analysts, estate agents, policemen and as commercial lawyers in the City Of London. Some are even prosecuting defendants charged for being in in the wrong situation at the wrong time. Just like they were 10-15 years previously.
And they would do well to put themselves back into the shoes of a young, naive and frightened teenager who has suddenly found themselves in the midst of a violent skirmish that perhaps for them never went wrong, going on to determine the rest of their lives. But if they were to think long and hard at some of the scrapes that everyone eventually walked away from relatively unscathed they might well do well to remember that it just could as easily have been them standing in the dock than the defendant they are hoping to convict today.
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 friends or relative.Your friends/relative gets into a fight, your at the scene watching what is happening obviously thinking that it has nothing to do with you, 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.
ReplyDeleteYou 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, 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’ pockets because you are best friends or relatives etc 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, 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 to 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 placed 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 unwarrented 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, really 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’ don’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 commited. 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.
ReplyDeleteSomeone 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 sentence’s 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?
That is totally correct. Most people think that it could never happen to them. Please remember Joint Enterprise is being used in large cities as a form of ethnic cleansing and under the Joint Enterprise a large number of people are charged for the same crime which clears up the streets ect with large groups of innocent youths and clears up the stats figure of Murder. While locking up innocent people including people who had received a call from an withheld number and answered their own personal phone within a certain timeframe of a crime being committed, are serving a life sentence on a 28 year tarrif. Believe it.
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