Guilty by Association

Few would argue with the value

of a law that has secured convictions

in some of the most notorious murder cases of recent years.

Almost 19 years after Stephen Lawrence was stabbed to

death in South London, two men have finally been jailed for his murder.

Gary Dobson and David Norris were both found guilty,

although there was no proof that either had delivered the fatal blow.

The law that convicted them was joint enterprise,

which holds that a person in a group or gang can be held

responsible for the criminal acts of others.

Kids need to know today that

if they're going to get involved in gangs and gang crime,

then they can be found as much guilty for being there

as actually committing the crime.

Rising incidents of gun and knife crime have put

pressure on successive governments to take tough action on gangs.

Where there is a need for new laws, we will pass them.

Where there is a need for tougher enforcement,

we will make sure that happens.

For too long, there's been a lack of focus

on the complete lack of respect shown by these groups of thugs.

Joint enterprise, a 300-year-old law,

has proved a highly effective weapon in this fight.

But there is a growing unease within the legal profession that

it's being too widely applied.

There's a very clear public policy that the gang violence problem

is a serious one, and it is. Politicians are quite right.

They have to deal with public concerns. And so does the law.

What we don't know is whether the cost of doing that is

people are being convicted of things that they haven't done.

-What's happening later, then?

-We'll be on till late this afternoon.

It's really hard. What do you think, Mum?

I'm not getting too optimistic, but...

..I don't want him to get really down.

Sally Halsall, her husband Jeff

and daughter Charlotte are a family struggling to deal with

the news that Sally's son Alex has been involved in a serious crime.

'Detectives are continuing to search for the killers of a'

22-year-old man stabbed to death in a busy shopping area of West London.

It was a Friday night

and we got a call from a police station to say that they

had my son and he wanted to talk to me and he was very, very distressed.

The most distressed I've ever heard him.

And he told me that he had been arrested for murder.

Alex Henry had been involved in a street fight,

in which one of his friends had used a concealed knife to stab two

brothers, killing 21-year-old Taqui Khezihi.

Following his arrest, Alex Henry was charged with joint enterprise

murder, along with three other boys.

Did you know about joint enterprise?

I knew there was a law where a group of people,

one of them may commit the crime,

but the others are egging them on and they knew he was going to do it and

they supported him, encouraged him to do it, then that is joint enterprise.

And I agree with that law.

If my son was murdered, I would want the murderer to be charged

and to be sentenced for murder.

If the group of people that were with him had planned it

and intended on doing it with him, then I would agree with that law.

But I would not want people in that situation,

peripheral of that situation,

or involved where both groups were fighting and...I would want each

and every boy to be charged with what they did.

The use of joint enterprise raises the question - how far should

a person be held responsible for the unexpected actions of others?

In August 2011, Wayne Collins, a 24-year-old barber from Luton,

was about to fall foul of the law.

He was in Birmingham for Carnival when the riots broke out.

Let me explain to you about that night.

The CCTV footage shows my nephew

didn't hurt anybody,

he didn't pick anything up, he didn't throw anything.

All he was, was there.

What CCTV footage also showed, however,

was that Collins was in the crowd

when a hooded figure produced a gun and fired it towards the police.

Later that night,

he was arrested and charged with possession of a firearm.

-Officer...

-Yeah.

-Are they trying to say that I had a firearm?

-Yeah.

-From where, though?

-Nobody's going to talk to you.

-So, if you've got any questions, ask them in your own mind.

-Uh?

'You do something wrong, yes, you should be punished for it.

'My nephew did nothing.'

He knew one person, who happened to be related to another person.

Whether or not they were doing something, I don't know.

But why should you be punished for their actions?

The case against Wayne Collins was that

while he was in Birmingham, he'd met up with Jermaine Lewis,

whose cousin, Nicholas Francis,

was later convicted of using the firearm that night.

The police claimed that this association meant me

must have known about the gun and foresaw how it was going to be used.

-A gun?

-The fact that he may have known is speculative

because this other guy's got a gun, he must have known he had it...

Well, there's nothing to base that on.

Must have known he was going to shoot it police,

rather than in the air, there's no evidence of that.

It's all complete speculation.

But that's the way that joint enterprise works.

How can you prove that someone knowingly knows what somebody

else is thinking?

-What's your occupation?

-I'm a barber.

'His problem was that he was not good at giving his account.'

He was completely out of his depth.

He was in Birmingham with people he didn't know.

They were all members of serious gangs.

So when Wayne was arrested, I think he was frightened of saying

things and he gave a story which wasn't true to the police.

-What are you doing in Birmingham?

-Meeting a girl.

-At one o'clock in the morning?

-Well, obviously...

The guys smash up the girl's windows and they're chasing me.

What can you do? The girl's drove off and left me.

What do you want me to do?

'Because he would had to name the people he was with,'

that would have linked them with him

and he was actually found at the scene and they weren't.

On that basis, he wasn't believed and he was convicted.

Although there was no evidence that Collins had seen or touched

the gun, he was found guilty of possession of a firearm with

intent to endanger life and sent to prison for 18 years.

18 years is excessively long for somebody who has not

participated and is based purely on inference

and speculation as to what Wayne may have known.

Concerns about joint enterprise are echoed at the highest

level of the legal establishment

and have led one recently retired senior judge to take the

unusual step of publicly criticising the way the law is being used.

Let's take a murder case.

A person can't normally be convicted of murder unless he intended

to kill or intended to cause serious, very serious, bodily harm.

But in joint enterprise,

instead of having to intend to kill someone, it's enough if he foresaw

that someone might be killed, but it's a very low threshold.

You can think of many situations in your life where you foresee

that something might happen, but you certainly don't intend it to happen,

in any way at all.

Whatever their misgivings, judges are obliged by law to impose

life sentences on anyone convicted of joint enterprise murder.

Alex Henry has been on remand for five months and is discovering

how difficult it is to fight a charge under joint enterprise.

He was speaking to the solicitor and the solicitor was like, "Joint

enterprise murder is 25 years," and he was just like, "But how?

"I didn't know there was a knife." And he went, "Yeah, I know.

"But they're going to try and prove that you knew there was a knife,"

and he was like, "But how do they know what I'm thinking?

"How am I looking now at 25 years for shopping with someone that may

"or may not have had a knife?"

We spoke to the barristers yesterday and they were really helpful.

'What was their perspective on the case as it stands at the moment?'

We asked them that.

We said, "Roughly, what do you think?" And they said, "50-50."

I mean, when I came out of that meeting, I thought -

things are getting worse.

I had a secret hope we'd go in there and they'd say,

"Listen, he's clearly innocent. The jury will know he's innocent.

"He probably won't even get anything."

The person that did commit the murder, I believe, will be

denying it, so without any independent witnesses seeing

a knife, none of the boys that

didn't do it, seeing a knife, who's to know who actually had this knife?

Who's to know who committed it?

-So I think that's our first task of them finding it...

-Who did it.

Well, we know who done it, but the jury seeing who done it.

And then, second to that, proving that the other three

co-defendants didn't know about the knife.

The effectiveness of joint enterprise in securing

multiple convictions for a single crime was

demonstrated following the murder of Ben Kinsella in 2008.

'This CCTV shows the events immediately before Ben's death.

'His acquaintances are being chased up an Islington

'street by the defendants.'

Three men were charged with the killing

and although it was never proved which one of them stabbed Ben,

using joint enterprise, they were all found guilty of murder.

All three of them knew what they were doing. They came armed with knives.

He was stabbed... Within five seconds, he was stabbed 11 times.

So...

Yeah, I hold them all responsible.

Not one of them tried to stop the other two from doing it.

Not one of them assisted my son while he was bleeding on the floor.

There was none of that.

So...as far as I'm concerned, they're all culpable for it.

Without joint enterprise, probably maybe one or maybe even

two of them would still be walking the streets today.

The public demonstration which followed Ben's death

reflected wide support for the principle that all those involved

in a murder, however peripherally, should be held to account.

If a gang of kids or men or whatever want to go out

and commit these sort of crimes, then they've got to know that

if they are part of it or involved in it,

then they're going to be held responsible.

In 2010, 16-year-old Nicholas Pearton was stabbed to

death in a South London street.

The police need to stop this. Do you know what I mean?

Before all of our children die. You know?

Parents aren't meant to bury their children. You know?

And to see the state of his mother last night, well,

she was just literally uncontrollable.

Nine teenagers were eventually charged with his murder.

The prosecuting counsel was Edward Brown.

There was a dreadful killing in May 2010.

A young boy was chased across a park, across a road,

stabbed in the middle of the road by one person.

He received a stab wound to his back.

It proved fatal, within seconds.

The trigger for the murder was a school gate confrontation between

two boys from the Grove Park area and two boys from nearby Sydenham.

Nothing serious happened. No blows were exchanged.

And the boys from Grove Park went back home,

to their various homes,

and a plan was said to be hatched to travel to the Sydenham area

and mark this disrespect by finding

and probably chasing the Sydenham boys and showing them that they

can't get away with just doing this at the school gates.

The group from Grove Park travelled by bus

and met the Sydenham boys in the park on their home turf.

The Sydenham gang ran away, only to return a few minutes later,

brandishing weapons.

There was a brief stand-off and no blows were exchanged, but as it

finished, Nicholas Pearton found himself isolated from his friends.

He was chased out of the park and into Sydenham Road,

where he was stabbed once in the back.

He died in the doorway of a shop, protecting

himself from another person who was seeking to attack him further.

The case was heard at the Old Bailey in January 2011.

Although only one boy had stabbed Nicholas Pearton,

nine were charged with his murder.

Joint enterprise, it's called. It's not a statutory definition.

It's an ordinary expression.

The public, I suspect, would approve of a secondary party,

not the stabber or the shooter,

but the secondary party being convicted of a serious crime,

if they were participating, by for example,

encouraging the gunman or the knifeman.

Of the boys charged with murder,

only three were in the street at the time of the stabbing.

The rest were scattered over the area where the fight had

taken place.

One of them, 15-year-old Joseph Jay,

claimed to be at the other end of the park.

I've described the law of joint enterprise as a drift net.

You drop your drift net into the ocean

and you pull out all sorts of fish, big and small,

and you hope that someone's going to chuck the small fish back in before

it's too late, but you can never be sure that's going to happen.

-That looks like it's reversing...

-Let the car through.

Oh, I see.

Alex Henry's family have been given CCTV footage by his lawyers,

showing the lead up to the fight.

They're viewing it for the first time.

-OK, so that's the...

-They're going to the car.

The confrontation happening down there, so there's four now.

And now, they're... He's trying to split it up.

-Trying to pull him away.

-Yeah, he's...

It's very, very clear that he's trying to stop them from fighting.

-Yeah.

-One of them. And that's one of the friends of my son.

The boy doing his best to break up the fight is Younis Tayyib.

He's one of the four on remand for the murder.

-Oh... Gosh, he is trying hard, isn't he?

-Mm.

The boy behind Younis, carrying the bottle,

is another of Alex's co-defendants, Janhelle Grant-Murray.

OK, so now they're coming around the corner.

My son isn't here in this at all.

They go round there, I think.

Alex, who had been shopping with his friend Cameron Ferguson,

runs into the altercation when he sees Younis

-and Janhelle on the other side of the road.

-There.

-There they are.

They're running there now

because they're running really fast cos they've seen their friends.

The fight, which lasts less than 45 seconds, takes place

in an area not covered by CCTV cameras.

The first boy to leave the fight is carrying what later proved to

be the fatal weapon.

There he is. Stop. There. Now. See?

-This is the bag, here.

-And it's sticking out...

-It's sticking out!

A plastic bag doesn't stick out like that,

unless it's got something in it that is long.

The running boy,

who confessed later that day to the other three that he'd used

a concealed knife in the fight, is the 19-year-old Cameron Ferguson.

'Do you feel that there's been enough emphasis on finding which of

'the four were actually responsible for stabbing the victim?'

No. I think they just want to put them all in the frame.

They're all there.

They know one of the four did it and as they are allowed to,

under joint enterprise, they can scoop them all up in one go.

They don't have to find out, really, who out of the four did it.

Makes their job easier, really, doesn't it?

Two years after his conviction for possession of a firearm,

Wayne Collins' appeal is being heard at the Royal Courts of Justice.

We appealed against the conviction,

but it's difficult to appeal against a conviction because you have

to show there is some error in the judge's summing up.

There must be error of law.

On the 18 years, our case was this is disproportionate for somebody

who is described as playing no active role in the event.

Deborah Taylor, Wayne's aunt, has been

fronting the family's campaign for his release.

I've come out here today to the Royal Courts of Justice a lot more

confident in the justice system than what

I felt two-and-a-half years ago on the trial.

There is a way that, you know, with persevering and campaigning,

we can get this sentence reduced.

That's great. That's all I need from you.

It went really well. James dusted them.

James said the judge misled them. How he delivered it, Mum, was amazing.

Amazing! Amazing!

-'Is the family hopeful?'

-We are, yeah. We are.

Reduction in sentence. You know?

Definitely. So, yeah, it's good. Happy. There's hope.

And at the end of the day, thank God there's an appeal court.

Wayne Collins' family will now have to wait

until the ruling is handed down by the judges.

This picture of my daughter

and my brother was taken about nine months ago in jail.

As you can see, she loves him a lot.

And he looks completely different to his mugshot.

We just thought, tops, they'll hold him three days,

and he'll come home and we'll go through it together

till we get to court,

but as the days went on, the weeks, the months,

we started thinking, "What's going on?"

And then we realised that he was

probably going to get an example made of him...

-Yeah.

-..but didn't think it was going to be 18 years.

He's involved in everybody in our family and our lives,

so somebody being taken away for 18 years, you know,

in a very small involvement of a crime.

I don't see the justice in that, as his father.

The main thing that comes to mind is Alex is very kind and sweet.

He's the only one, really, out of all of my family

that can tell if I'm upset just at a glance.

He'll just come in and I'll be looking away and he'll be,

"What's happened? What's happened? Are you OK?"

He's very protective of, like, his family, and especially me and my mum.

He's really smart, as well.

When we were younger, he was really, really good at maths.

He flourished at school.

The teachers told me he was outstanding.

But then he developed what they classified him as having ADHD

and he couldn't sit still in the classroom.

They perceived that to be aggression and bad behaviour,

when actually it's a child who needs to be reassured

and needs a safe environment. He was expelled when he was 11.

Once you're kicked out of school,

you're sent to these alternative provisions.

No child that likes education is actually going to want to go

to one of these things, cos it's not really teaching,

it's just a place for them to be off the street.

I did feel like I was losing him.

I was losing him to his friends and I didn't know who they were.

He seemed to have a whole world that he was involved in

when I was at work and he wasn't at school.

This... It was an incredibly difficult, impossible situation.

I've read books and articles and no-one ever talks about it,

because people are ashamed.

They're ashamed to say that, "I lost control of...of my child."

Seven months after his arrest,

Alex Henry's trial has started at the Old Bailey.

All four co-defendants are pleading not guilty to charges of murder

and attempted murder.

The prosecution case is that each of them played a part

in a joint attack on Taqui Khezihi and his brother -

each knew about a knife and intended it would be used to stab.

On the fifth day of the trial, there is a dramatic development.

The judge called all the boys back in and asked Cameron Ferguson his plea.

Again, for both counts of murder and GBH with intent

and he pleaded guilty to both counts.

We are very pleased that the person who did it has been honest enough

and courageous enough, without any family around him to support him,

to hold up his hands and say that it was him.

It gives all of the families peace of mind to know that

that knowledge is out there now.

So that's really positive.

However, we're still proceeding with the trial,

because they're still trying to get the three other boys

in on the murder, as well.

They're going to seek to prove that they knew about the knife.

We know that that can't be proven,

but they're going to seek to prove it nonetheless

and we've just got to pray that the jury see the truth.

Despite the change of plea,

Alex's family are concerned that the jury will not be impressed

by his behaviour immediately after the fight.

He knew the police were looking for him,

but wanted to avoid arrest for three days

so he could attend his pregnant girlfriend's first scan.

And even though by this time Cameron had told him he'd used a knife,

the two of them went to hide out in a friend's flat in Croydon.

He got to Croydon and news reports start coming in

and he eventually realises there's been a fatality.

Alex calls me and he says,

"Look, Charlotte, my girlfriend's pregnant. Now, you need to pick me up

"and you need to take me and her to the scan."

I'm very excited, I'm... I was lost at the word "pregnant".

I'm like "What's Mum going to say? I'm so excited." And he goes,

"No, no, Charlotte, you must listen to the rest I've got to tell you.

"Something really bad has happened.

"I can't tell you what it is, because I don't want you to get in trouble,

"but you need to pick me up, you need to take me to the scan

"and then you need to take me to the solicitors

"and then take me to the police station."

So I planned to pick him up on the Friday,

but unfortunately on the Thursday night Alex is arrested.

For every family that sees joint enterprise as a threat

to the liberty of their loved ones,

there are others who believe it was their only way of securing justice.

That's Umar.

(RAPS) And if we had nothing we'd eat with bare hands

And I'm not going to lie I do have bear's hands

It's a hot day and I hear a glass break

Then I find a fast way to pass...

Umar Tufail was forging a music career

when he was murdered in a drive-by shooting in 2012.

INDISTINCT

That's it, cut.

-Just one of the...

-So full of life.

-He was, wasn't he?

-And fun.

-He was.

-Do you know? Sometimes, I do believe in the death penalty.

Because they took more than just his life, they destroyed Saj's,

his family's, his girlfriend's, any chance of ever having kids.

It's...it's extremely difficult.

Our lives will never be the same again.

Umar was sitting in his car outside his home here in Thornton Heath

when Daley and Thomas drove up alongside him.

They pulled out a gun and shot him once at point-blank range.

There was one shooter. But there were two people involved from the offset.

There was a lot of CCTV footage of the two lads together.

The accomplice was in the car.

He saw the shooter take out the gun and he admittedly said that

when the person who shot my son pulled out the gun,

he leaned back to make room for him to carry out his horrendous crime.

In my mind, I knew that they both were equally responsible.

So I think having joint enterprise really does

give you that peace of mind,

although I'll never be happy that my son has gone,

but at least we managed to convict both people

who were guilty of the crime that they committed.

RAP MUSIC PLAYS

Since the death of Umar, Saj has been on a mission

to warn young people about the dangers of gang crime.

The shooter got 25 years.

The accomplice, 22 without any parole.

These are two young men who had a life ahead of themselves.

Not only have they taken my son's life,

but they've also destroyed theirs.

So joint enterprise is there for a purpose

and it's there for a purpose when people are involved from the offset.

Thanks for listening.

CLAPPING

Is there a way to honestly prove to a court that you did not know

if your friend was going to commit a crime?

You know that you didn't know, but you might not be able to prove it.

That's the problem. That's why people get sentenced when they can't prove it.

It's the circumstances. It's the way the thing is set, isn't it?

You live in Loughborough,

I live in Loughborough, they ain't going to believe us.

You, you're from Loughborough,

I went to the same school as David Cameron

and I grew up with him and I'm in a car with you

and I didn't know, they'll believe you. It's the circumstances.

It's where you come from, at the end of the day.

Even in your situation, you get me?

The sad thing is that guy that was in the car, what's he going to do?

Sit in the passenger side and keep his head there?

Man was going to fire, you're going to move back anyway.

If you're in the car with me, and I pull out a gun

and go to shoot someone, you'll move.

The thing is, someone has to make a stand and say,

"What you did there was wrong." I can understand where you're coming from,

you don't want to snitch on someone.

But equally when are we going to stop doing this?

There are young children dying almost every day.

We don't live in a country where there's a civil war.

Do we? So someone has to stand up and say,

"This isn't the way to do it. We've got to make a stand

"and we've got to stop this."

I can't do it. It has to come from you guys.

Let me ask you this question -

do you think that the joint enterprise

is convicting innocent people?

-Yeah.

-Yeah. 110%.

-110%?

-110%.

Definite. Definitely. It is.

We know that joint enterprise will exist, it's not perfect.

Because it's very clear that the innocent can be taken down

with the guilty quite easily.

But at the moment there's high crime, there's areas

where things are happening, and we know what the police is going to do.

They are only interested in one thing -

getting you, taking you down, putting you inside

and the taxpayers' money paying for you whilst you're inside.

Money's being made, millions is being made, yeah?

And you're not seeing none of it. All right. OK, thank you very much.

Listen, there is... You guys, go and get yourself pizzas and food...

Alex Henry's trial is into its third week

and it's his turn to take the stand and give his evidence.

Alex will be...nervous this morning. I'm nervous.

Yeah, I think we all are.

Hopefully it'll be over by Friday.

Then we've just got the horrible wait

-and that's going to be horrendous.

-Yeah.

I hope he doesn't faint when he's on the stand.

He's fainted before, hasn't he, Charlotte?

It's horrible,

sometimes you hear them screaming going down to the cells, don't you?

What? Yelling stuff?

Yeah. That must be if they get a bad sentence or something.

The other day, it was someone making a real noise. I know.

Alex spends two days in the witness box.

On the second day, he's cross-examined by the prosecution.

Sometimes it's said,

"Well, how does a defendant prove he didn't know the person had a knife?"

Of course, that is exceptionally difficult.

I think everybody should understand that proving lack of knowledge

is not altogether easy for a young man in the witness box

at the Old Bailey.

So how do you think he did on the witness stand?

He did really good.

Really good.

His evidence that he gave was flawless,

it was just everything that had been said in his original statement

and everything he says is then also said by these other co-defendants,

they all say the exact same story.

And considering they've never been allowed to speak together,

they've been in separate prisons, they've been in separate cells,

they are not allowed to talk to each other.

You can't come up with stories that perfect and have them as lies.

So it couldn't have gone better, really.

In June 2011, the jury reached their verdicts in the trial

of those accused of Nicholas Pearton's murder.

Seven teenage killers were sentenced to a total of 74 years in jail today

for the murder of a 16-year-old in broad daylight.

What the youth of today need to understand,

that small minority that do carry knives

are actually in a group with knives.

It isn't the one that delivers the fatal blow

that will suffer consequences and punishment at court,

it'll be also those that actually are with him, as well.

Seven boys were found guilty of homicide offences -

four for manslaughter and three for murder.

Dale Green was the stabber

and Lamarr Gordon, who was alongside him in the chase,

was held to be the gang leader.

CCTV footage showed the two of them shaking hands

shortly after the stabbing.

The third boy convicted of murder was 15-year-old Joseph.

My client, Joseph, was at the opposite end of the park

when the stabbing happened.

And we showed that because there was a 999 call at the time from a

witness who was quite clear in her description of a boy with sunglasses.

My client was wearing sunglasses,

because he has an eye condition.

You can't beat hard evidence, which is the timing of the call

to when Joseph exits the park, the CCTV real-time

and if you collect all that together,

it works out that Joseph was 220m away

whilst Lamarr Gordon and Dale Green had exited the park.

30 seconds later, as Joseph comes out of the park,

Nicholas Pearton was already dead.

So what was the prosecution case against him?

The prosecution relied on the fact that Joseph's DNA was on a knife

that had been found afterwards.

Joseph accepted that he had picked up two knives in the park

after they had been discarded by the other group.

Now you might think that sounds quite ludicrous,

but the prosecution witnesses

describe the other group discarding weapons in the park.

Although neither of the knives that Joseph picked up

was the murder weapon,

this was enough to show he knew that knives were present.

It was then up to the jury to decide whether he foresaw

that they might be used by someone else to cause serious harm.

The use of joint enterprise in theory doesn't dilute the usual principles

of the prosecution having to prove their case

and having to make the jury sure.

But what it does is it places an enormous burden on a jury

to read the minds of defendants,

who are themselves required to read the minds of other defendants.

And I think that's a burden

that probably they shouldn't have to carry.

Of course, we are told anything can happen,

a jury can deliver any verdict.

No guarantee, anything not 100% but we still believed,

because he didn't have an intention to harm anyone. He should be OK.

So I still remember at the moment... that one of the jury stood up

and delivered the verdict to my son.

I'll never forget it. I'll never forget it, that moment.

Everything changed.

The jury found Joseph guilty of murder,

while concluding that the boy who fly kicked the door

moments after the attack was not guilty of the same charge.

He was convicted of the lesser offence of manslaughter.

I can only think that the jury concluded he

had a lesser degree of knowledge

of the knife than the other boy, who had a knife himself.

Because of his age,

Joseph's life sentence had a reduced minimum tariff.

But it will still be 12 years before he can apply for parole.

Such an intelligent boy.

He's spending... Effectively, he won't be released...

At the earliest, he won't be released until he's 30.

He was a 15-year-old boy at the time, with great prospects.

Hands down, he's guilty of violent disorder,

but he's certainly not guilty of murder.

He wasn't to know Dale Green was going to do what he did.

Where's the foresight? You can't foresee that at all.

So I think it's a rather unfair...

And this case has been troubling me for some years now.

I think the public generally feel that you should be found guilty

in a criminal court for what you've done

or encouraged or participated in.

And this is such stretched participation, across the extent

of this park that day that he serves life for murder at the same time

as the boy who chased down the road and stabbed him?

In the final week of Alex Henry's trial,

the prosecution sum up their case against him.

-How did you feel watching that?

-Angry. Really angry.

Yeah, things that have already been disproved in court,

are now being presented as facts to the jury again,

even though they've been disproved.

For example, now they are alluding to the fact

that despite there has been a confession by one of the boys

as to being the primary...the stabber,

they're now trying to place my brother as another stabber,

primarily the killer.

Even though that the top he was found in didn't have any

of the victim's blood on it, the boy that's confessed

had an item which had the victim's blood on it.

The witnesses have said that the boy that's confessed was the one

that committed the stabbing.

You're certainly not going to say that you're guilty of murder

and GBH with intent unless you were the stabber on those two occasions,

where one person died and the other person was injured.

They're trying to say, "He wasn't! He didn't do it.

"He was just saying he was party to the group,

"that's why he pleaded guilty and someone else did it,"

and they're trying to say it was my son.

Well, over my dead body are they going to get away with that

and I will fight and I will carry on fighting for him.

I studied law at Brunel University, so during one of the criminal modules

we touched a little bit about joint enterprise.

So I knew vaguely the situations that can arise from it.

However, I never knew it would be like they would cast the net

this wide to get every single person

that was present there charged with murder.

That's not what I learnt. We were taught about proportionality,

the intention to kill, the mens rea element.

And...none of that is in this case or in the previous cases

where people have actually been convicted of it.

So I never realised it was like this.

The Court of Appeal's decision on Wayne Collins' application

for a reduction in sentence is due today.

Just having...

Just the waiting is just so...

It reminds me of the trial.

And the jury went out

and Wayne's the last person for a decision to be made.

So we were all on edge and it was like half of the family were like,

"Oh, my God, it's great."

PHONE RINGS

Here we go.

Hello, you're through to Deborah.

Hi, Barry, how are you doing?

Hi, it's bad news, I'm afraid.

What's the news?

They've not reduced his sentence at all?

They're not reducing it?

I'm really, really angry.

So we have to go to the European Court Of Human Rights?

I can't believe it. Wayne's going to be devastated.

The Court of Appeal said, "Well, not only did his presence encourage

"what went on, but by the jury's verdict, he intended to do that."

And so it was "participation in extremely serious offending"

is what the Court of Appeal said and upheld the 18 years.

-Hi, Mum, it's me.

-'Oh, God.'

They're not letting him... They're not granting his appeal.

'Oh, God, my baby!'

I know. We're going to go to the Court Of Human Rights.

'Jesus Christ, have mercy, my poor baby. I will be strong.'

But I don't know how Wayne would ever have been able

to give evidence well, cos I don't think he's that sort of person.

The prosecution has spent weeks going through it all,

looking at every little bit, "How we can catch you out,"

"Oh, you said here that it happened at five past three,

"and now you're saying it's ten past three and how can you be so wrong?"

It's kind of...

It's a game for those people who are not caught up in it.

For those people who are caught up in it, it's their life.

But for the others, it's a game they play.

The jury have retired

and Sally and Charlotte are visiting Alex at Belmarsh Prison

for the last time before hearing the verdict.

I hate seeing him in there. He's got such...

He's got bags, he looks pale,

he hasn't been out in the fresh air, he hasn't had sunlight.

He just looks really, really scared and down.

There's so many different groups of boys,

all up for joint enterprise murder, so he speaks to them and he sees them

explaining that there's no evidence against them

and that they've been told that they're going to be off

and they're getting really excited about going home.

But then he sees them a day later and they've been found guilty.

So now he's terrified.

We have, I'm sure, young men now in prison for a minimum of 30 years

for some criminal activity

where there was no intent to kill or cause grievous bodily harm

and I think it's a very serious problem.

We're not saying they're not guilty of anything,

it's just whether we really need to go to murder,

particularly when we have such hugely long minimum terms.

'I feel that I'm a victim of a joint enterprise

'as I've been convicted of a charge just for associating with someone.

'I do not avoid the fact that my behaviour on the horrific day

'of the murder was disorderly. Being a 15-year-old boy,

'following the crowd to gain a bit of respect from the older lads,

'I was naive to how things could end up.

'I had never believed that anybody would be hurt

'as a result of setting out that day, let alone killed.

'What most people forget is that a large quantity of people

'who didn't carry out the fatal blow

'are also punished for another's actions.'

He's still struggling to accept the fact...

..he was convicted. So, as a mother...

if I think about how he feels...

..I'm very, very sad, but I realise...

..the things I can do is very limited.

After four days of deliberations,

the jury have arrived at their verdicts.

Younis Tayyib, who had tried to break up the fight,

is acquitted of the murder of Taqui Khezihi.

Alex Henry and his friend, Janhelle Grant-Murray,

have been found guilty,

alongside the self-confessed stabber, Cameron Ferguson.

Everyone was in a real state by the time we went in.

The judge tells you that when the verdict is announced

that the people in the gallery, that's us,

have to take it without a noise - in absolute silence, we have to remain.

And so we didn't, because obviously it was such a shock,

an ambulance had to be called for one of the mums.

I'm still just absolutely baffled as to how a jury

could come to a majority verdict

of guilty when there was no direct evidence in this case.

Just for...

..hanging out with the wrong friend, I suppose.

-That's it.

-For just being there.

There's nothing he could have done to change it.

He couldn't have foresaw that anything was going to happen

that day, he was just a young boy going shopping with some friends.

Charlotte went up to the relative of the victim...

I think it was the father.

..father of the victim and said, "I'm sorry for your loss,"

and he said, "I'm sorry for yours."

You're very courageous, saying that to him.

There's no winners in this, is there? That's for sure.

No.

So this is the road Ben was murdered in - North Road.

And after his murder, all the kids went to lay flowers

and they all signed the street sign.

You know, even the kids around here, locally, as a community,

had had enough.

There was a big march organised by young kids saying,

"Enough is enough of this knife crime and violent crime on our streets."

Our son never got to find out about his exam results.

We was given an envelope for that,

sort of two months after he died to say that he was a straight-A student.

You know, we'll never see him grow up.

They can go and visit their sons or daughters.

We have to go up to a cemetery every weekend or nearly every weekend.

You know, that's what you've got to think about.

He was precious to us.

I feel to them, life's cheap.

He was our everything, wasn't he?

Yeah.

Following Ben's death,

the Kinsella family successfully campaigned to increase

the mandatory sentence for murder with a knife from 15 to 25 years.

The laws are there to sort of keep people on the straight and narrow.

But if people want to break them,

then they've got to face the consequences of that.

They've got to know that

if they're going to get involved in serious crimes like murder and stuff,

then being part of it, you might as well throw away the key yourself.

Sentencing for Alex Henry and his co-defendants

is at Snaresbrook Crown Court.

Cameron Ferguson receives a life sentence

with a minimum term of 22 years.

As secondary parties, Alex and Janhelle Grant-Murray

are given life with minimum terms of 19 years,

despite there being no proof that either had a knife

or intended to kill or cause serious harm.

What was his face like? Because I was just comforting you.

I was... He seemed OK, he just looked straight ahead.

-He seemed all right. He seemed dignified.

-He did.

-He just looked straight ahead.

-Yeah. Yeah.

It's a very harsh sentence.

I think Cameron Ferguson's actions on that day

did tragically take Taqui's life,

left a family devastated and mother heartbroken.

But this law has also taken two more victims,

my brother and his friend, Janhelle.

And they're going to be serving a life sentence

for a murder they did not commit,

and two more families are now devastated,

two more mothers are now heartbroken.

And something needs to change.

Alex and Janhelle's lawyers are appealing against their convictions.

It's difficult to appeal convictions, generally.

The reason's a good one, actually,

which is that the Court of Appeal respects the jury's verdict

and unless something has gone seriously wrong in the trial process,

they will uphold that verdict.

They may not agree with it, but if they think that the jury

were given all the relevant facts

and the trial was conducted fairly and according to the law,

then generally speaking that's enough for the verdict to stand.

Even if it's one that people don't think is correct.

The appeal process has left the Collins family deeply disillusioned.

We just thought, even if he got four years taken off,

we would have been happy,

but for it to just completely be dismissed, we were just...

It was devastating. It was like him being resentenced all over again.

-Yeah.

-On the run-up to the appeal, it gave him hope, didn't it?

Like, something to look forward to, but there's nothing now.

No justice, no peace.

-What do we want?

-Justice.

-What do we want?

-Justice.

No justice, no peace.

'Unfortunately, the demographic group who are affected by joint enterprise

'are going to be a section of society

'who do not have a great deal of influence.'

And I don't see middle-class people ending up in the dock

being accused of crimes on the basis that they associate

or they're with other people who commit crimes.

-When do we want it?

-ALL: Now!

-Free our innocents.

Calls for reform are coming not only from families

caught up in joint enterprise cases, but also from the Law Commission

and the Justice Committee of the House Of Commons.

So far, successive governments have declined to act.

'I think there's an element of policy here.'

The law has progressed in this way,

to cater for large numbers of senseless killings,

when if you didn't have a definition such as exists at the moment,

very often the followers, the encouragers would be acquitted

of any responsibility for the death.

My brother is currently serving 19 years' imprisonment

for a crime he did not commit.

-Free our innocents. ALL:

-Free our innocents!

My suggested reform would be that a person is only guilty of murder

if he intended to kill or intended to cause grievous bodily harm.

No intention, no guilt.

-ALL:

-No intention, no guilt.

I'd like the people that want this reform to talk to parents like us,

parents and families that have lost their loved ones.

Talk to us and see if that changes your mind.

You know, I'm sure if the boot was on the other foot,

they'd feel exactly as strongly as us.

Joint enterprise is a court full of lies.

-ALL:

-Joint enterprise is a court full of lies.

-Let our prisoners go.

-ALL:

-Let our prisoners go.

-Not guilty by association.

-ALL:

-Not guilty by association.

The judges in the Supreme Court tomorrow could say this doctrine

has led us too far away from basic principles and we should abandon it.

So it could be done.

I'm not saying it would be done, but it could be done.

-Are you saying it should be done?

-In my view, it should be done.