McFarlane, Andre

Andre McFarlane, previously Andre Johnson-Haynes, was one of seven defendants tried on the basis of joint enterprise for the murder of Shakilus Townsend in London in July 2008.

All defendants pleaded not guilty at the Central Criminal Court in April 2009, but the jury returned guilty verdicts against all seven.

Mr McFarlane, who was 17 at the time of the murder, was ordered to be detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure with a minimum term of 12 years’ imprisonment – the starting point for youths in such circumstances.

Mr Johnson-Haynes’s application for leave to appeal refused in July 2011 – several years before the Supreme Court decision in the case of R-v-Jogee, Ruddock-v-The Queen [2016] UKSC 8, [2016] 2 WLR 681 (“Jogee”) made significant changes to the law in relation to secondary parties in joint enterprise cases.

He applied to the CCRC for a review of his case in March 2016 on the basis that the change in the law regarding joint enterprise following Jogee may be relevant to his case.

Having considered the case in detail the CCRC decided to refer Mr McFarlane’s conviction to the Court of Appeal because it believed that there was a real possibility that the Court would find that it would be a substantial injustice to maintain Mr McFarlane’s conviction and would quash it as unsafe.

This referral was based on the change in the law in relation to the liability of secondary parties brought about by the judgment of the Supreme Court in Jogee, the scope of which was further clarified by the Court of Appeal in R-v-Johnson and others [2016] EWCA Crim 1613.

The CCRC referred the conviction in January 2019.

The Court of Appeal later upheld the conviction.