Man convicted of murder allowed to appeal after joint enterprise ruling

By ITV News Correspondent Juliet Bremner

The Supreme Court has allowed the conviction of a man jailed for murder to be appealed in an important change to law on joint enterprise.

The law lords have ruled that someone can NO LONGER be convicted of murder as a secondary party purely on the basis that they may have had "foresight" of a possible crime.

In future the prosecution will have to prove that a secondary party had knowledge of "intent" to kill in order to be found guilty of murder.

In this particular case a man called Ameen Jogee is currently serving a life sentence for murder. He was convicted of the murder of Paul Fyfe, who was killed in the hallway of his home in Leicester in June 2011.

He and a friend Mohammed Hirsi had gone to the home of Mr Fyfe's girlfriend and Mr Hirsi took a knife from the kitchen and stabbed Mr Fyfe.

Although he had encouraged his friend to stab Mr Fyfe, Jogee was on the pavement outside the flat at the time of the attack.

The judge directed the jury that Jogee was guilty of murder if he took part in the attack on Mr Fyfe and realised that it was possible Hirsi might use the knife with intent to cause serious harm.

This will no longer apply and the CPS will now have the opportunity to bring a retrial for murder in which it would have to be proved that Jogee had "intent" to kill Mr Fyfe even if he did not deliver the fatal blow.

He will not be released from jail as the Supreme Court say they are satisfied that he is guilty of manslaughter.

But the judgement means that those convicted of murder through joint enterprise since 1984 can now ask their lawyers to examine whether he convictions are safe. It is not known how many cases this would affect but it could be dozens.

Campaigners have welcomed the decision, which means the bar for prosecutors has been raised.