Four 19-year-olds serving eight years in prison for texting as part of a violent conspiracy in Manchester must appeal their convictions and sentences, according to The Guardian.
Among them is Ademola Adedeji, a rugby player who had met with MPs for his community work.
His lawyer, Abigail Henry, said her legal team was in the process of drafting her appeal, which will state that the judge misdirected the jury at the eight-week trial.
The appeal will also argue that the conspiracy law, which came into force before smartphones and social media, is being applied too widely in the modern world.
He will say that there should be a “withdrawal” defense, where a conspirator withdraws from a plot long before it is actually carried out. A report from the Law Commission in 2009 explored whether this defense should be introduced, but it has never been incorporated into the statute.
Adedeji was one of 10 black youths in Moston, north of Manchester, who pleaded guilty to plotting a violent conspiracy to avenge the death of his friend John Soyoye, who was killed in a machete attack on 5 November 2020.
The convictions have caused a great deal of controversy in Manchester, with racial justice activists saying teenagers were found “guilty of association”.
Four of Adedeji’s co-defendants were convicted of conspiracy to murder and sentenced last week to 20 or 21 years in prison. A jury learned that the four had carried out violent attacks and presumed to do so in the lyrics of drilling rap songs.
Adedeji and five other people were found guilty of conspiracy to commit grievous bodily harm and sentenced to eight years in prison.
He and three of his school friends – Raymond Savi, Omolade Okoya and Azim Okunola – were convicted only of text messages in the Telegram app which, according to the prosecution, showed them helping to identify and locate targets to attack. . None of the targets named in the chat were ever injured.
All four will appeal their sentences or convictions, or both, The Guardian has learned.
Okoya, a talented football player who was studying public services at the university, has already filed his appeal against the conviction and will soon also appeal against his sentence, his legal team said.
Adedeji was the only one of the defendants who answered questions when he was arrested. He said he had been devastated by Soyoye’s murder and admitted to being involved in Telegram’s incriminating chat, in which he forwarded the zip code of one of Soyoye’s killers.
In a letter to the judge, Mr. Justice Goose, Adedeji accepted responsibility for the texts.
He wrote: “I put myself in this situation because of the fact that emotions imposed on me. This was because someone I considered a little brother had just been ruthlessly taken away. John was someone with whom I shared hopes and dreams. , someone I grew up with when I was seven.I would train with him, play FIFA and do what normal kids would do.Although he took a different path to mine, it shattered me that they took his life. having a broken heart when I found out about his death, I was taking antidepressants to help me sleep in. I felt like they had taken a part of me.
“This is not an excuse for the text messages I sent, I was talking for emotions and I didn’t want to say a word of what I said. I apologized many times and I didn’t want to say the messages I sent and I didn’t want to nothing happened “.