Mitchell, Laura

Laura Mitchell was tried for murder and violent disorder on the basis of joint enterprise at Bradford Crown Court in September 2007.

She pleaded not guilty but was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 13-and-a-half years, and to a concurrent sentence of three-and-a-half years for violent disorder.

Ms Mitchell, Michael Hall, Henry Ballantyne, and Jason Fawthrop were tried together as secondary parties to the murder of Andrew Ayres who died after a fight outside a pub on 28 January 2007.

Ms Mitchell, Mr Hall and Mr Ballantyne were convicted whilst Mr Fawthrop was acquitted. Another man, Carl Holmes, admitted to being the principal and pleaded guilty to murder.

Ms Mitchell sought leave to appeal against her conviction. Leave was refused by the full court in February 2009.

Ms Mitchell applied to the CCRC for a review of her case in January 2014.

Two specific developments in the law relating to joint enterprise took place during the CCRC’s review of this case.

The first, on 18 February 2016, was the publication of the Supreme Court judgment in R-v-Jogee, Ruddock-v-The Queen [2016] UKSC 8, [2016] 2 WLR 681. The judgment made significant changes to the law in relation to secondary parties in joint enterprise cases.

The second, later in 2016, was the Court of Appeal’s consideration of applications for leave to appeal on “Jogee” type points (i.e. points related to the change in joint enterprise arising from the case of Jogee and Ruddock). The Court of Appeal’s judgment in the case R-v-Johnson and others [2016] EWCA Crim 1613 was handed down on 31 October 2016.

Having reviewed Ms Mitchell’s case in detail, the CCRC decided to refer the case for appeal because it considered there was real possibility that the Court of Appeal would find that it would be a substantial injustice to maintain Ms Mitchell’s conviction and would quash it as unsafe.

The scope of the joint enterprise in Ms Mitchell’s was the central issue at trial and appeal. The CCRC concluded that there was a sufficiently strong case that the change in law would have made a difference to the verdict in Ms Mitchell’s case.

The CCRC referred the conviction in March 2018.

The Court of Appeal upheld the conviction in November 2018.