XMAS MESSAGE FOR ALL JENGbA FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS

Dear Families & Supporters of JENGbA

Just to let you know the December Newsletter and Xmas cards are going to be put in the post today. Thank you Sadif (Qhuram Awan's sister) for taking up mantle of last minute printing and then next day delivery to me which the lovely postman just delivered!  And Bernie Morrison (Kenneth Alexander supporter and my sister) who also managed to print off 100.  Thank you Patricia (Tirrel's Davis's mum) who is sitting in my kitchen as I type  hand writing 270 cards to all the JENGbA gals and guys inside. And thanks to Andy (Jack Dempsey's dad) who happened to have 300 Xmas cards in his loft (and they are lovely charity ones!)  and delievered them here the other night. 

We are very lucky that we have such great families that will pull together in support of JENGbA.  I have been trying to fund raise from 'outside' sources and any success in those endeavours will be shared with everyone.  I am confident we will get support because the campaign has achieved so much in such a short space of time.  However JENGbA is now officially out of funds!  The newsletter costs £94 alone in postage (that is to 270 but the number rises every month) and does not include printing as families such as Sadif, Deb Madden's, mine and the Braithewaites have helped. 

This is the wrong time of year to ask families, already streched with a loved one inside prison for money - however is there a right time?  Lots of people give up their time because we all know how important this campaign is to those inside.  Can everyone please donate at least £10 which will cover the postage costs to loved ones and others who have no supporters.  This is not a lot in the great scheme of things but it will keep us going.  And please, please can families fund raise as well!  Hold a JENGbA quiz night - contact loaded friends you may have - do a sponsered something or other -  anything because it also gets our message out there.  We are all in this together so let's join together and make 2012 the most challenging yet!!  Joint Enterprise is finally on the radar and we have to take the credit for that - now it is about the kind of noise that resulted in the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four being released from prison.  That is what 2012 means for JENGbA and that will only come about if we ALL fight for it.

Gloria Morrison
JENGbA All the Way!!

JENGbA NEWSLETTER 11 NOW ONLINE

You can view and download it by clicking on this image...

JENGbA PRESS RELEASE: Fresh Evidence? Not in this Court!

Sheffield men denied retrial despite having evidence that could clear them

10 December 2011

Nigel Junior Ramsey, Denzil Ramsey, Levan Menzies and Michael Chattoo were convicted on 7 August 2009 of the murder of Tarek Chaiboub, who was killed when a sawn off shotgun was discharged at him in broad daylight on Spital Hill, Sheffield, on 11 July 2008.

Although Nigel Ramsey was in prison at the time, he was said to have ordered the killing using a mobile phone that had been smuggled in to him. There was no evidence to prove that any of the four had pulled the trigger, so all were linked to the killing through use of the joint enterprise law.

The four were said to be members of an ‘S3 postcode’ gang. They were alleged to be also responsible for a previous assault on Chaiboub carried out on 6 July, to which another defendant, Javan Galloway, pleaded guilty.

The four charged with murder were put on trial first, and two other individuals, Daud Ahmed and Abdi Rahman Ali, who were alleged to have assisted Denzil Ramsey with disposing of the weapon, were charged with perverting the course of justice and tried separately after the four were convicted.

A shotgun found hidden nearby in Osgathorpe Park was claimed by the police to be the weapon used in the murder, who linked it to all the defendants in both trials. The police commissioned Dr Robinson, a firearms expert, to examine the gun, and on the basis of his report, the prosecution were able to claim that this was the murder weapon. The four charged with murder commissioned their own firearms expert, Mr Dyson, to examine the evidence, but his findings gave their lawyers no grounds to challenge the prosecution evidence concerning the gun.

The only other evidence was that of mobile phone calls made between the defendants (although there is no record of what was said in any of the calls).

At the second trial, the other defendants commissioned a different firearms expert, Geoffrey Arnold, who said that the experts in the first trial had not done their work properly. As a result, they had missed opportunities that could have proved whether the gun was or was not the weapon used to kill the victim.

In addition, Mr Arnold found evidence sufficient to enable him to conclude that it was unlikely that it was the murder weapon. It had almost certainly not been discharged since the barrel had been sawn off, before the murder. Following his evidence at the second trial, the jury found the defendants Daud Ahmed and Abdi Rahman Ali not guilty.

The mother of two of the defendants in the murder trial attended the second trial. Hearing that a key item of prosecution evidence had been discredited, she informed her sons’ lawyers. They commissioned a further report from the defence expert used in the second trial, and lodged an appeal with the Court of Appeal. This appeal was heard on 8-9 December 2011 by judges Aiken, King and Stephens.

The appeal was entirely concerned with argument about whether the evidence of the defence expert from the second trial would count as fresh evidence. ‘Fresh evidence’, for the purposes of a criminal appeal, is evidence that was not available to the defence at the trial. Appeal court judges do not want their court to waste its time with hearing expert evidence that defence lawyers could have obtained, but failed to obtain at trials. They asked: was the evidence offered by the second expert genuinely fresh, or merely an opinion which differed from that of the first defence expert?

The judges did not call Mr Arnold so as to hear direct from him whether or not his evidence was fresh. They simply decided that the evidence was not ‘fresh’, and so the appeals were dismissed. They will give their reasons at a later date.

The families of Nigel and Denzil Ramsey, Levan Menzies and Michael Chattoo were outraged at what seems to be a gross injustice. At the later trial, exactly the same prosecution evidence that had been used to convict the four of murder had been discredited by a competent expert so that a jury could not find the defendants guilty. Surely they would be entitled to have this same evidence put before a new jury in a retrial of their case?

They had not had the chance at their own trial to use evidence that the prosecution expert had not followed established scientific procedures and as a result deprived them of the chance to prove that the gun shown to the jury could not have been the murder weapon.

Further, the jury that tried them had not had the chance to hear evidence showing the gun was unlikely to have been the murder weapon, nor did they have the guidance of a competent expert who could explain clearly why even the evidence produced by the prosecution showed that the gun was not the murder weapon.

For example: when a shotgun is fired, plastic wadding is discharged along with metal shot. Usually marks (striations) are made on the wadding which are characteristic of the particular gun that fires them. The wadding found on the victim showed no striations. But the wadding from a whole series of test firings by the prosecution expert showed consistent striations. This gun always left these particular marks. So it is highly unlikely that the wadding found on the victim was discharged by the gun exhibited at the murder trial.

Lord Justice Sir Richard John Pearson Aikens told us that the Court had decided not to admit this evidence on grounds of “expediency and justice”. “Expediency” is clear enough: their lordships do not want their valuable time taken up with appeals based on expert evidence. But “justice”? We are unable to see where anything we could recognise as justice comes into their considerations.

And if the four lads from Burngreave jailed with minimum terms of 20 – 35 years conclude that justice has been denied them and maybe put forever beyond their reach, we could not contradict them.

COMMITTEE ON THE REFORM OF JOINT ENTERPRISE VIDEO

HALDANE SOCIETY - SPEECH BY GLORIA MORRISON (JENGbA)

Gloria's speech to the Haldane Society on 6 December 2011 is available HERE

JENGbA PRESS RELEASE - RESPONSE TO HRAG & LORD JUDGE

PRESS RELEASE - JENGbA (Joint Enterprise: Not Guilty by Association) 7 December 2011
 

Lord Judge said: "It seems to me, perhaps the real problem is with the law of murder itself.

 

"It's particularly difficult and troublesome when more than one person is said to be involved, a joint enterprise murder.

 

"Who is guilty of murder when four people, three people, surround somebody?  The one who kicks, the one who suddenly produces the knife - the offensive weapon that causes the death - the one who eggs on the one who's got the knife, the one who says to him, 'For God's sake...'?" he added.

 

"It's complicated too by the various defences.  These are all extremely complicated when they're put together in the one case."

 

(Extracted from http://t.co/hPw2HYCF)

 

This is the reaction of campaign group JENGbA (Joint Enterprise: Not Guilty by Association) to the report of the Homicide Review Advisory Group, (6 December 2011).  The report recommends that ‘mandatory’ life sentences are replaced with Judges having the right to decide on sentences, depending on the circumstances of the case. 

The Homicide Review Advisory Group is made up of Judges, Academics and QCs.  It suggests the system does not allow for sentences to match individual crimes.  JENGbA's concern is that instead Joint Enterprise allows for anyone at the scene of a crime, or with an association with the perpetrator to be prosecuted in the same way and then sentenced as the same, and does so with little or no regard to their actual culpability.

This is an important part of the debate about sentencing.  If there was proper discretion, then Judges would not have to give a life sentence for cases of 'association'.  JENGbA is actively campaigning to change the law on Joint Enterprise.  A law that means innocent bystanders can, and have been dragged into serious criminal cases merely by some association, and not necessarily a criminal association to the perpetrator.  The public are not aware of this law and, therefore, do not understand how it is being used or that in its current state is convicting innocent people.  The Nuffield Report released earlier this year also goes someway in explaining this.

Trials become overly complicated as all defendants are put together on the same charge, often leaving juries with no choice but to convict all the defendants, even when it is obvious the offence was committed by a single perpetrator.  Education and debate is crucial and campaigners believe the issue can no longer be ignored.  As it stands it leaves a heavy and unnecessary burden on the taxpayer, destroys the lives of families and leaves communities with no trust in the Police or the Justice system.

 

Gloria Morrison, JENGbA Coordinator says

 

"The UK's most senior judge has expressed concerns relating to joint enterprise convictions.  JENGbA is representing prisoners who have been convicted under joint enterprise and their families.  We have been contacted by over 270 prisoners many of whom are serving life sentences for something they did not do, did not foresee was going to happen nor intend to happen, but have been convicted by an archaic law that is being abused to get convictions and not justice.  The public are NOT aware that there are people in prison serving disproportionate sentences for an offence where there was no evidence to convict them so joint enterprise is used as a catch all for convictions".  

 

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CALL

Gloria Morrison on 07709115793 or Janet Cunliffe on 07729033890

www.jointenterprise.co

JENGbA & LAI Meeting in LONDON - Tues 13th December, 7.30pm

JENGbA and London Against Injustice are holding a joint meeting at 7.30pm on Tuesday 13th December, Milfords Pub, 1 Milford Lane (off The Strand), London.

All welcome.

Milfords, Milford La., Strand, London

Directions and map HERE

JENGbA & INNOCENT MEETINGS - Wed 7th December, 6pm, Royal Oak Pub, OLDHAM

JENGbA is holding a meeting at 6pm on WED 7th DECEMBER, at the Royal Oak pub in Union Street, Oldham OL1 1EN.  (This immediately precedes the regular monthly meeting of INNOCENT which starts at 7pm in the same venue.)

Anyone who has been affected by Joint Enterprise or wishes to learn more about our campaign is welcome.

Directions available HERE

Royal Oak, Union St, Oldham