My son, Jack Dempsey, is a victim of the perverse law known as Joint
Enterprise. His crime was to behave bravely by pursuing a criminal
assailant to detain him and for that he received a sentence of life
imprisonment.
The Party
In January 2003, Jack was out with a friend and acquaintances, Nicki
Miller, sisters Stacey and Ashley Faunch, and Stacey's boyfriend,
Tyrone Woolley. They were celebrating Nicki's eighteenth birthday.
Jack was twenty-one, Woolley was twenty-three and the sisters were
both under twenty years old. Nicki was the only one of the party who
Jack knew as a friend. The others were just acquaintances. They went
to a disco, The Boulevarde, in London's Ealing Broadway, and had a
good time. As the party left the club they saw an abusive row going on
between some East European guys and three young men, two black guys
and twenty-seven years old Paul Carr, who was of mixed race. They
deliberately avoided this fracas by turning into a pedestrianized
shopping precinct. But the row tailed off just then and Paul Carr and
his companions followed them into the precinct.
The First Incident
What happened next is attested to by witnesses. Paul Carr and his
mates caught up with Nicki Miller's party near a well known horse
statue just off Uxbridge Road. They started chatting-up the girls, who
told them they had boyfriends. At first, the encounter was
good-natured but Paul Carr persisted with his unwelcome advances and
the exchanges became heated. Tyrone Woolley then produced a
flick-knife from his hip pocket and threatened Carr. This was the
first time anybody else in the party knew Woolley had a knife on him.
Jack was alarmed by this development and interposed himself between
Woolley and the other guys. Carr's two companions were also worried
and pulled Paul Carr away, saying they didn't want any trouble.
Woolley then put the knife away. As the two groups parted, Carr pulled
free of his mates and returned to pester Ashley Faunch. He started to
paw her and she warded him off. A witness overlooking this incident
from his bedroom window testified to exactly what happened then. As
Ashley fended him off, Carr punched her so forcefully in the face that
her tooth penetrated her cheek. She fell unconscious to the ground.
Carr turned and fled immediately after delivering this vicious punch.
The others, including Carr's companions, ran to help Ashley but Jack
chased after Carr straight away. As he ran around the corner on to
Uxbridge Road, Carr stopped and tried to punch Jack, but missed. Jack
tried to punch back but Carr caught his arm and threw him down, then
he fled again. Jack got up and pursued Carr again. He did not know
that Tyrone Woolley and Stacey Faunch had joined the chase behind him
at that point.
The Fatal Second Incident
Paul Carr ran about two hundred metres into another disco where
he was already known as a troublemaker. The bouncer, Mr Ngei, grabbed
him and started to push him back out just as Jack arrived. Jack was
panting for breath, but he called for the receptionist to call the
police and he shouted at Carr, "Why are you punching girls?" He
said this hoping the bouncer would help him to hold Carr until the
police arrived. Woolley and Stacey arrived behind Jack as Carr was
forced out of the doorway. Carr threw a punch at Jack as soon as the
bouncer released him, but missed. Jack tried to pin his arms but Carr
pulled away and then threw a punch at Woolley, who scuffled with him.
Woolley then turned and ran from the scene. Paul Carr pulled his shirt
off, revealing a blood wound to his side. He then collapsed. At that
point, Jack and Stacey realised Woolley had used his knife. They too
then ran from the scene. This all took place in less than a
minute.
The Aftermath
Jack and Stacey returned to the horse statue to rejoin Nicki Miller
and Ashley Faunch, who had recovered consciousness by then. There was
no sign of Tyrone Woolley so Jack called him on his mobile. Woolley
agreed to return to meet them. When he came back, Jack and the three
girls got into his car but Woolley wanted to go to his mother's
house to discuss the incident. Jack knew this was a very serious issue
and he told Woolley to drop him off instead. After Jack left the car.
Stacey asked her boyfriend, "What did you do?" Woolley replied,
"I stabbed him." At his house, his mother also asked what happened
and Woolley told her he had, "... stabbed the guy with his car
keys!" All three girls testified to these confessions later. Paul
Carr died in hospital about an hour after the stabbing.
The following afternoon as Jack returned from work on a bus, he saw
police incident tapes around the entrance of The Boulevarde. He phoned
Woolley and told him the matter was obviously quite serious. Later
that day, the media reported the death of Paul Carr and the police
hunt for the 'gang' responsible. Woolley and his mother took a
plane to America that evening.
The three girls were traced the next day and then armed police raided
Jack's mother's house looking for him. Jack had moved in with his
partner and their baby son a few weeks earlier and so he was safe for
a while. He decided to give himself up a few days later because he
knew the police would have heard all the details from the girls. He
also knew he had not done anything criminal.
The Murder Charges and Trial
Jack and Stacey were both charged with murder! Tyrone Woolley was
arrested weeks later in Canada and was extradited to face trial along
with them. Jack and Stacey were charged with murder under the doctrine
of Joint Enterprise
Woolley's defence was that it was Jack who had stabbed Paul
Carr. He said he had no weapon that night and denied producing a
flick-knife at the horse statue incident in spite of the evidence of
the girls and Paul Carr's two companions. He denied confessing to
the girls in the car and at his mother's house and claimed that Jack
and the three girls, including his own girlfriend, beside him in the
dock, had conspired to blame him in his absence! Needless to say, he
was convicted of murder.
Khalid: The police had acquired a very pliable and untrustworthy
witness. He was an Afghan by name of Khalid, whose English was very
poor and whose immigration status was questionable. He was operating
that night as an illegal mini-cab driver. He had given false
identification details to the police at the scene of the killing but
they traced him after a week of enquiries at other mini-cab firms in
the area.
His evidence was contradicted by numerous verifiable facts; his
claim to have seen into the club's foyer as Paul Carr was manhandled
out - but CCTV coverage of the entrance to the disco shows the pair of
drapes that makes that impossible! - the evidence of Mr Ngei and other
people at the scene as well as the differing accounts of the incident
he gave in several different statements.
Critically, he had confused Jack with the victim. He described
Jack as a "half-caste" and Paul Carr as "the boy". The reverse
was true. Jack was twenty-one and white English whereas Paul Carr was
twenty-seven with an African father and an English mother. Khalid also
passed Jack by and misidentified an innocent volunteer in a police
line-up. Regardless, both the prosecution and the trial judge used his
highly dubious evidence to suggest that both Jack and Stacey had
participated in an attack on Paul Carr in the doorway of the disco. He
claimed to have heard the 'half-caste' (Jack) shouting, "Give it to
him." to Woolley in the club's entrance. He also said Stacey had
kicked Paul Carr as he lay on the ground dying.
This was deadly Joint Enterprise evidence against Jack and
Stacey, despite the fact that even the prosecution conceded Khalid's
evidence could be as much as 75% wrong! Stacey's counsel was able to
prove materially that Khalid was definitely wrong about the alleged
kick.
Pathology Evidence:
Dr Freddy Patel was declared unfit to practice and struck off by
the General Medical Council in August 2012. Unfortunately, he was
still on the Home Office list of pathologists in 2003 and his evidence
was very damaging against both Jack and Stacey because he recorded a
number of bruises and brawl injuries as well as two stab wounds on
Paul Carr's body. This made it look as if these injuries were
inflicted on him at the entrance of The Boulevarde but that was not
the case.
Apart from the stab wounds, all the cuts and bruises on his body
were older because he had been involved in a very violent fight with
two off-duty policemen in a pub in Harrow three days earlier. The pub
window was broken in this fight and he also resisted arrest violently
when uniformed police arrived, adding to his injuries. A police doctor
recorded his injuries at the police station in Harrow but Freddy Patel
made no age distinction between the various injuries and the stab
wounds in his written report.
This written report was accepted because the defence,
inexplicably, did not call evidence about the Harrow fight. It was
classified as 'unused evidence' and Dr Patel was not called to be
cross-examined. This meant that the jury could conclude that there was
a violent fight involving Woolley, Jack, Stacey and Paul Carr during
the course of which he suffered the various other injuries recorded in
the post mortem report.
Jack's Defence:
Jack related truthfully the sequence of events and his role and
intentions in pursuing Paul Carr that night to the police when he gave
himself up and in the witness box at the trial. Only Khalid's
evidence conflicted with Jack's and Stacey's accounts. But his
evidence also conflicted with the bouncer's evidence. Mr Ngei
remembered hearing Jack shout, "Why are you punching girls." but
denied hearing anything else and contradicted claims by Khalid about
the alleged fight. The disco receptionist confirmed the bouncer's
account. Nevertheless, the trial judge was hostile and bad-tempered
with these two witnesses but highly accommodating with Khalid. He gave
Khalid an hour's break during his cross-examination to allow him to
refresh himself with his earlier statements to the police because he
was so incoherent, inconsistent and uncertain. After the verdicts, the
judge also gave Khalid a reward of five-hundred pounds for the value
of his testimony. Another witness, Mr Samra, an Indian guy who also
failed to hear anything Khalid claimed to have heard and who called
the ambulance and administered first-aid to the stricken Paul Carr
until it arrived, did not even get a mention from the judge.
The Verdicts and Sentences
The jury returned to court during their deliberations to ask to read
statements again and to ask the judge if they could find one defendant
guilty of manslaughter. The judge was very irritable with them. He
admonished them because he had spent two days summing up. He then
repeated the concept of culpability that informs the perverse law of
Joint Enterprise which, in effect, means that murder convictions
should be returned against anybody in the company of a killer. A
concept that makes us all responsible for the deadly actions of
others. My brother's keeper.
Wooley was found guilty of murder, not surprisingly in view of
his absurd defence, and he received a life sentence with an 18-year
tariff. Jack was also found guilty of murder and received a life
sentence with a tariff of 16-years. Stacey was acquitted.
Futile Appeals
Just after the trial, Jack received a bundle of documents by
post. Labelled 'unused evidence', they were sent to him
anonymously. They recorded the details about the Harrow fight
confirming that Paul Carr's injuries, apart from the stab wounds, had
not been inflicted that night. Jack started an immediate appeal with a
new legal team. Dr Freddy Patel was approached and made the following
statement:
"I concur with the serious concerns expressed by the defence counsel
that crucial medical evidence of Dr W who had examined the deceased
[in Harrow] a couple of days prior to his death was not disclosed at
the original trial. An insight into the age of the injuries listed by
Dr W could have significantly altered my opinions on the causation of
these injuries. Therefore, at this late stage it is paramount in my
view that the colour album of the postmortem photographs are
reproduced for Dr W in the first instance to identify the older
injuries and thereafter Dr R to prepare an expert report for the
defence following which I can review my original opinions and give due
consideration to any appropriate amendment in the light of new
disclosures."
Regardless of his medical incompetence, Freddy Patel was honest enough
to appreciate the crucial nature of the unused evidence. Nevertheless,
the appeal court rejected Jack's appeal because they said his
defence knew about this evidence and chose not to use it! This is
staggering. Jack did not know about this evidence but he knew full
well that the jury thought he and Woolley had fought with Paul Carr.
But that was not the case. Apart from his failed attempt to punch Jack
and then Woolley's scuffle and stabbing, Paul Carr was not otherwise
assaulted at that time.
It appears our appeal courts abide by the idea that if a
barrister is negligent or incompetent, his client suffers the
consequences, even a life sentence! Whether or not the defence teams
actually knew about these Harrow injuries is uncertain. It was
available in the case papers and that is all that is certain. We have
not been able to ascertain the truth because the original legal team
refuse to comment about the case. But many other cases of miscarriages
have revealed how the police are very skilful at concealing evidence
favouring the defence by mislabelling it.
A second appeal was launched by Edward Fitzgerald QC, who campaigns
vigorously against Joint Enterprise convictions. But the result was
the same. Once a jury finds somebody guilty, that verdict is set in
concrete as far as the criminal justice system in the UK is
concerned.
Why?
The accounts given above are true and Jack's mother and sister,
myself and his partner are devastated that Jack is suffering unjust
imprisonment for a murder in which he took no part and could not
possibly have predicted while his son grows up without a father. How
could a jury convict Jack of murder in those circumstances?
The answer is that there is a political policy of the day that
requires the state to appear to be tough on knife crime and on
'gangs', whatever that means. Any couple of friends or small group
can now be described as a 'gang' and Joint Enterprise is being used on
an everyday basis to convict innocent people, mostly young black guys,
of murder whenever a fatality occurs in a common brawl. It has no
relationship to justice or morality and it is being extended to many
other sorts of crime as well. The police love Joint Enterprise and
regularly advertise their intention to use it. Convictions are easily
obtained because they do not have to prove any actual criminal
behaviour. Judges are stretching the concept of culpability to such a
degree that they can persuade juries to convict innocent parties in
Joint Enterprise cases. Just being there is enough.
There is also a massive reluctance on the part of governments and the
judiciary to accept the fact that the police often groom witnesses,
fabricate evidence and commit wholesale perjury in the course of their
everyday duties. The huge number of cases of known miscarriages, along
with the many others never exposed, proves this point. The Cardiff
Five case, the Stefan Kiszko case and the case of Gary Mills and Tony
Poole best describe the culture of corruption and abuse endemic in our
police CID forces.
The fact that Jack's jury convicted him but acquitted Stacey is also
inconsistent with the evidence. If they believed Khalid then they
should have convicted Stacey. If they didn't believe Khalid then
they should have acquitted Jack. Stacey was lucky but as I discovered
in other examples of Joint Enterprise cases, juries seem to acquit
some defendants because they feel bad about convicting all the
companions of the actual perpetrator.
The evidence of Dr Freddy Patel was very damaging but Khalid's was
also critical regardless of its conflict with the testimony of other
witnesses. The police saw Freddy Patel's report and wrongly concluded,
as did the jury and everybody else, that Paul Carr had been in a fight
outside The Boulevarde. They needed a witness to say there was such a
fight because Mr Ngei's evidence did not record such a fight. I
believe Khalid was primed by the police to make claims about what he
saw and heard that night to create a fight that never happened but
which made a Joint Enterprise case against Stacey and Jack. Khalid was
scared of deportation or charges in relation to his illegal
mini-cabbing and he was, therefore, putty in their hands. The cases of
Sion Jenkins and Dudley and Maynard as well as the Cardiff Five shows
clearly the way the police groom or blackmail witnesses. If you don't
believe they do this, I can only say you are very naive.
I can tell you that almost all miscarriages are a result of
police corruption of evidence and I invite you to examine the few
cases I mention above on their websites or the many other cases
mentioned on websites run by INNOCENT - JENGbA and JUSTICE. There is a
link below to the JENGbA site:
What Next?
I have joined with an organisation called JENGbA (Joint Enterprise:
Not Guilty by Association) in a public campaign to fight for justice
for my son and the sons and brothers of the more than three hundred
mostly young kids who have been inhumanly imprisoned because
politicians want to look good in public on the law and order issue. I
recommend that you check out the cases of Jordan Cunliffe, Nicola
Faulds, Tirrell Davis, Jade Braithwaite and any of the many other
cases where the state has used collective punishment to imprison
innocent people.
Joint Enterprise is an evil law that is a menace to everybody and
their children. If you go out with a friend and there is a fight, it
doesn't matter that you do nothing criminal, you will be charged and
convicted of murder if someone in your company kills. We must force
the hypocrites who rule us to repeal this dreadful anti-social
law.
"For evil to triumph it is necessary only for good men to do
nothing."
(Edmund Burke)
Please support JENGbA and help to get justice for my son and many
others like him. Write to your MP or contact the following e-mail
address to offer moral support: andy@jackdempseyinjustice.co.uk - or
use the link above.
