End of an Era: Court of Appeal gives Final Judgment on the Contemplation Principle in Cases of Murder by Joint Enterprise
| Author | Tony Storey |
| DOI | 10.1177/0022018316638948 |
| Published date | 01 April 2016 |
| Date | 01 April 2016 |
| Subject Matter | Court of Appeal |
Court of Appeal
Court of Appeal
End of an Era: Court of Appeal gives Final Judgment on the
Contemplation Principle in Cases of Murder by Joint
Enterprise
RvOkello & Rahman [2015] EWCA Crim 1971,
Court of Appeal
Murder, Joint Enterprise, Weapons
One afternoon in December 2013, Donald McNichol (DM), 54, was using a computer at Stockwell
Community Centre in South London. He got into an argument with Mamunoor Rahman (MR), 18, after
DM complained that MR was making too much noise. The row escalated quickly and MR punched DM,
who returned the blow. MR’s older brother, Monsur Rahman (R), 19, and other men in the centre
including Daniel Okello (O), 20, and Ibrahim Ford (IF), 17, then attacked DM with punches. At one
point, MR threw or brought down a chair on DM’s head, at which point he collapsed to the floor and the
men fled. DM was taken to King’s College Hospital and placed into a medically-induced coma, but died
two weeks later of a vertebral artery defect which led to ‘traumatic subarachnoid haemorrhage’ (bleed-
ing in the brain). Dr Jerreat, the pathologist, was unable to choose between whether the fatal blow had
been caused by a punch or by the chair.
MR pleaded guilty to manslaughter but the Crown decided to pursue a charge against him of
murder, along with murder charges against O, R and IF. They all appeared before His Honour Judge
Bevan QC and a jury at the Central Criminal Court in September 2014. For O and R it was argued that
there was a ‘qualitative difference’ between the use of fists and the use of a chair. The Crown conceded
that if the use of the chair was qualitatively different from the use of a fist, then the jury could not be
sure that the chair did not cause the fatal injury and MR would be solely responsible. On this point,
HHJ Bevan QC decided that there was a case to answerinregardtoOandRonthebasisofjoint
enterprise, and that whether the use of a chair was qualitatively different from the use of fists was a
jury matter. In his opinion, neither fists nor a chair were ‘inherently lethal unlike a knife or a gun’, but
both were ‘capable of causing serious injury’.
MR, O and R were convicted of murder while IF was convicted of manslaughter. O and R appealed
against conviction, submitting that the throwing or bringing down of a heavy wooden chair on the head
of the victim was of a fundamentally different nature from punching that person. It was submitted that
the use of a wooden chair was ‘obviously much more dangerous’ than using fists, which therefore took
MR’s attack on DM outside of the scope of the joint enterprise.
HELD, DISMISSING THE APPEAL, the trial judge was ‘clearly correct’ in leaving the issue to the
jury (at [38]). Giving the judgment of the Court of Appeal, Lloyd Jones LJ said that the question as to
whether the use of a chair as a weapon was ‘qualitatively different’ from a fist was prima facie a question
The Journal of Criminal Law
2016, Vol. 80(2) 82–87
ªThe Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0022018316638948
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