The human rights campaign group Liberty has backed three black men who are contesting their murder convictions on the grounds of institutional racism by Greater Manchester police and the criminal justice system.
Liberty has made its own submission to the Criminal Cases Review Commission to support the application made in May by the three men, Durrell Goodall, Reano Walters and Nathaniel “Jay” Williams, who are serving life sentences.
They were convicted as teenagers under the controversial joint enterprise law for the 2016 killing of Abdul Hafidah, 18, in the inner-city Manchester area of Moss Side. Only one teenager, Devonte Cantrill, 19, committed the fatal stabbing, but 11 defendants, all black, were convicted – seven of murder and four of manslaughter – after GMP and the Crown Prosecution Service alleged they were members of a violent gang, AO, who had chased Hafidah down because he was in a rival gang.
Liberty argues in its submission that evidence of alleged gang membership presented by the police and CPS is disproportionately used against young black people and is often flawed and a potential breach of defendants’ human rights if it criminalises their private lives without very compelling reason.
In particular, Liberty argues that the presentation of rap and drill music as alleged evidence of gang affiliation is often racially prejudicial, and can spring from ignorance of youth culture.
Alleging gang membership based on evidence of young people’s friendships, musical tastes and images on mobile phones potentially breaches rights protected in the European convention on human rights, to a private life, freedom of expression and assembly, and to a fair trial and lives free of discrimination, Liberty argues.
Evidence presented by GMP and the CPS at two trials of the defendants charged with Hafidah’s killing before the judge, Sir Peter Openshaw, included a rap video made a year earlier, and selected images on some defendants’ mobile phones including posing for pictures using hand signs, and the alleged favouring of the colour red. Cantrill, the one defendant who stabbed Hafidah, had no such mobile phone images presented as evidence.
A GMP officer, DC Bryan Deighton, gave evidence referring to the defendants in the tradition of Los Angeles Bloods and Crips gangs, and gangs engaged in serious criminality and violence in Manchester more than 20 years earlier.
However, no criminal activity such as drug dealing was alleged to have been carried out by the AO gang, and eight of the 11 defendants convicted had no prior records for any relevant criminal offences. Most were studying at college and had good character references. They and their families have consistently argued that AO was a music initiative, they were not in a gang, and they did not intend Hafidah to be killed.
Prof Eithne Quinn of Manchester University, an expert on the use of rap and drill in criminal cases, and Patrick Williams and Becky Clarke, of Manchester Metropolitan University, experts in the risk of “gang” labelling being racially discriminatory, have made statements in support of the CCRC application. Youth workers and members of the Moss Side community who knew Goodall, Walters and Williams well, have also provided statements saying they were not members of a gang.
Keir Monteith KC, who made the application on behalf of the three men, argues that the convictions are a “gross miscarriage of justice” that resulted from institutional racism in the police, CPS and legal system.
Emmanuelle Andrews, policy and campaigns manager at Liberty, said: “We know young Black men are particularly likely to be targeted by joint enterprise prosecutions, often on the basis of dubious evidence that young people were ‘in a gang’. We also know that the notion of a ‘gang’ is not only poorly defined but is also heavily racialised, and that the policing of ‘gangs’ is used to criminalise young Black men and boys’ friendships.”
GMP and the CPS have stood by their work on the investigation and prosecution after Hafidah’s murder, and both have pointed out that juries determined the guilty verdicts. Openshaw has responded to questions by saying that he follows the longstanding convention that judges do not comment on their cases.
Monteith said he expected to have a first meeting with the CCRC this month. A CCRC spokesperson said they could not give a timescale for considering or deciding the case.
