Witnessing history — what it was like to be in the Supreme Court when judges reversed 30 years of legal history
Katrina Kilkenny, Intern at CrowdJustice, made her first visit to the Supreme Court yesterday — Thursday 18th February — to watch the highest Court in the land hand down its judgment on the doctrine of joint enterprise.
This case made legal history — reversing 30 years of British legal doctrine. As noted by the BBC, “in the years to come it will have a profound effect on the lives of victims, defendants, the nature of police investigations and prosecutions up and down the land.’ It was also historic in the way it reached the Supreme Court. The campaign group JENGbA (Joint Enterprise: Not Guilty By Association), which has been campaigning for years to change the law, crowdfunded their intervention on CrowdJustice. It’s the first time a case before the Supreme Court has been crowdfunded.
Waiting in anticipation
I arrived outside the Supreme Court early in the morning, expecting to be the one of the first observers there. But already waiting outside the entrance to the building was a crowd of JENGbA supporters, bracing themselves for a long-awaited decision that could change the course of UK legal history — and possibly the lives of their loved ones.
The campaigners arrived at the court armed with excitement and anticipation, holding up pictures of their convicted loved ones and highlighting their determination for change with shouts of ‘no justice, no peace’. We were allowed to enter the courtroom at 9am to await the judgement, which was going to be ‘handed down’ — i.e., read — at 9.45am. Seats filled up quickly with a sea of red — the colour JENGbA supporters have adopted for their cause.
Lord Neuberger, president of the Supreme Court entered the courtroom with the other judges at 9.45am on the dot. He started reading the judgment, beginning with the history of the way the doctrine of joint enterprise has evolved.
The judgment
The crowd listened intently, waiting for the moment when Lord Neuberger would deliver the crux of the judgment — is the way joint enterprise applied unjust to secondary parties? And when that moment arrived, it was met with gasps and tears in the gallery seats, as JENGbA supporters reacted to the Supreme Court’s unanimous determination that the courts have been interpreting the law “in error” for decades, in a way that may have resulted in the over-criminalisation of secondary parties.
As the court was adjourned, supporters and campaigners gathered outside of the Supreme Court once again to shout their cries of ‘no justice, no peace’, this time with a renewed optimism for the future.
CrowdJustice: helping people access justice
I and the rest of the CrowdJustice team left the Supreme Court with an optimism of our own. Yesterday’s judgment showed that empowering people to access justice through crowdfunding, through participation, can have momentous results for individuals, families, communities and the British justice system.
By Katrina Kilkenny. Katrina has a MPhil in International Peace Studies and is currently completing an internship at CrowdJustice
Have a legal case that could benefit from crowdfunding?
