The Crown Prosecution Service commenced a pilot to monitor Joint Enterprise homicide or attempted homicide cases in February 2023.
What is joint enterprise?
Legal doctrine that applies where persons assist or encourage another to commit a crime. The individual is known as an accessory or secondary party.
In practice:
When an offence occurs with two or more persons involved there will be principals and secondary parties.
principals = D1
secondary parties = D2
It is not always possible or necessary to identify who the principal is within the case.
Principal = individual carries out the substantive offence. They perform or cause the actus reus of the offence with the required mens rea. If two or more persons do so they are joint principals.
Secondary Party = Aids, abets, counsels or procures D1 to commit the substantive offence. The secondary party can be prosecuted and punished as if he were a principal offender.
CPS Data Limitations:
Concerns regarding disproportionality in Joint Enterprise prosecutions. The CPS has commenced a pilot scheme whereby homicide and attempted homicide cases prosecuted on a joint enterprise basis are flagged manually in 6 / 14 CPS areas.
Review the cases to see features of particular interests. This can include the number of defendants associated with each case, whether defendants were ‘principal’ or ‘secondary’, demographic details and whether the case was considered as ‘gang’ related offences.
Pilot Data:
Data is drawn from two sources
CPS case management system (CMS)
Data collected manually by CPS areas for the pilot project
Gang related:
The definition of gang is set out in the CPS prosecution guidance. Prosecutors can only refer to this terminology if there is evidence to support the assertion. The terminology used would disproportionately affect minority ethnic individuals. 39 / 190 cases were considered gang-related.
Defendants and Co-Defendants:
34% of cases in the sample feature 2 defendants. 80% of the cases feature 4 or fewer defendants.
Cases with one defendant being identified can be prosecuted on a Joint enterprise basis despite evidence highlighting it being committed by multiple suspects. There can be a number of suspects with charges but others absconding the country meaning the trial cannot be hosted with all defendants.
Until the next Legal Thought,
Elicia Maxwell
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