Alex Henry was out shopping in west London when he ran to help friends who had got into a fight with four strangers. In the 47-second scuffle that ensued, Henry threw a punch and threw a mobile phone at the men and ran off. But one of Henry’s friends had a knife concealed in a carrier bag, which he used to kill one man and wound another.
Cameron Ferguson confessed to the stabbing but more than a decade later Henry is one of three men in prison for the 2013 murder of Taqui Khezihi.
Like many others serving joint enterprise sentences, Henry is hoping for reform to the law, under which young people in particular can be imprisoned for crimes their associates commit. A bill being heard in parliament on Friday is intended to ensure that criminal liability applies only to people who make a “significant contribution” to an offence.
Writing from his cell in HMP Dovegate, Henry said: “Politicians need to know that it does not make sense to have three to four men in prison for murder when it’s a street brawl of some sort. Jails are getting full up of young men who have life sentences when they were not the one who inflicted the fatal blow.
“These men have the potential to become normal members of society, but then you put them in jail for 20 to 30 years with bad company for associating with bad company.”
Henry was given a “life-changing” 19-year sentence that cannot be cut short. Now 31, he said: “I have spent my whole 20s in prison and still have my 30s to serve. It’s made me look at life in a way that I shouldn’t have to.”
Under joint enterprise, Henry and Janhelle Grant-Murray were judged by the jury to have foreseen that their friend Ferguson had a knife, and therefore to be culpable for the murder. Henry had previous convictions for assault and possession of a knife, which the jury was told about, but Henry said it was “a spontaneous incident” and that he “never knew anyone got stabbed until later on that day”.
Henry is in his second year of an Open University degree in sports, fitness and coaching, and is trying to turn around his life for his daughter. He said: “I have had a lot of support from family and friends, which has helped me to become the person I am today. I could have easily gone down a path of drugs and violence inside prison.
“My view on the law is that it is very dangerous and confusing … sentencing needs to give young men who haven’t killed anyone the chance to have a family and live a normal life.”
The law on joint enterprise was changed in 2016 when the supreme court ruled that a defendant must have intentionally assisted or encouraged a crime to be convicted.
Henry’s family thought this would result in his case being reconsidered – along with many others – but the change was not applied retrospectively.
He lost an appeal that argued he was autistic and had been unable to read the situation. The condition was only discovered after a Cambridge University expert, Prof Simon Baron-Cohen, visited Henry twice in prison and concluded that he had many of the key markers for it.
Other attempts to release Henry have also failed. The Criminal Cases Review Commission refused to refer the case back for appeal on the basis of another expert’s evidence on autism. It argued that since the appeal court had disbelieved Baron-Cohen’s assessment and said it was not relevant to the conviction, Henry had little chance of success. A mercy petition to the chancellor was also turned down.
Henry was the only white person involved in the fight and believes race played a part in the case, too. “I believe I was convicted of the crime because of two main factors. Firstly, my [co-defendants] are black and Asian, secondly we all had convictions told to the jury. I honestly believe if I was in the dock with four white men with no convictions told to the jury, I would have gone home,” he said.
Black people are 16 times more likely than white people to be prosecuted under joint enterprise, CPS figures show.
Kim Johnson, the MP for Liverpool Riverside, whose bill is having a second reading in parliament on Friday, said: “Alex’s case is yet another tragic miscarriage of justice, one that has become unfortunately all too familiar under current joint enterprise legislation. The government must take urgent action to stop young people being locked up for longer than they’ve been alive just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, condemned as guilty by association.”
Henry’s sister, Charlotte Henry, was spurred on to qualify as a lawyer by her outrage at her brother’s conviction. She is behind another bill in its early stages that she hopes could make it easier to appeal in cases such as his.
She said: “It’s being found guilty on the basis of someone else’s conduct. If you wanted to encourage you would have yelled encouragement, you wouldn’t just be present and it’s these cases which lack contribution which still go before a jury.”
