REGINA v NELSON IDIABETA
2014
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
United Kingdom
CORAM
- LORD JUSTICE ELIAS
- MR JUSTICE SWEENEY
- MR JUSTICE GREEN
Areas of Law
- Criminal Law and Procedure
2014
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
United Kingdom
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
This case involves an appeal against conviction and a renewed application for leave to appeal against sentence for a murder conviction in a gang-related incident. The appellant was sentenced to a minimum term of 19 years. The appellant claimed his rights were violated during trial due to biases in the closing speech and summing-up. LORD JUSTICE ELIAS rejected these claims, stating there were fair reasons for the jury's decisions and supporting the trial judge's ruling. The conviction and sentence were upheld.
J U D G M E N T
LORD JUSTICE ELIAS: This is an appeal against conviction by leave of the single judge and the renewal of an application for leave to appeal against sentence after refusal by the same judge.
On 17th December 2012 in the Central Criminal Court before His Honour Judge Marks QC the appellant was convicted of murder. The following day he was sentenced to be detained at Her Majesty's Pleasure. A period of 19 years was specified as the minimum term, under section 269(2) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 , less time spent on remand. His co-accused, Nathaniel Okusanya, was also convicted of murder and sentenced to custody for life and in his case the minimum period specified was 20 years.
The facts were these. This is yet another murder arising out of gang warfare among youths in London. On Friday 2nd March 2012 Kwame Ofoso-Asare, then aged 17, was stabbed to death, in broad daylight, on the Moorland housing estate in Brixton, South London at about 5.30 in the evening. He was with a friend, Angeleto Davis, who managed to escape.
Two boys, the appellant and the co-accused, chased Kwame and Angeleto. Angeleto jumped over a wall but Kwame was cornered in a cul-de-sac in Adelaide Close. He was stabbed in the back some 14 times and died at the scene.
He was a talented sixth former in the Forest Hill School. The impact on his family of his death was devastating, as one would expect.
Earlier that day a member of a South London gang TN1 (Trust No-one), Garfield Stuart, had been stabbed 28 times in an incident at the West Norwood bus garage and had been blinded in one eye. The attacker was apparently a member of a rival gang, known as GAS (Guns and Shanks). The TN1 gang were apparently based mainly in and around the Tulse Hill Estate. They were in conflict with the GAS gang whose patch is on a number of estates near Brixton including the Moorlands estate.
The prosecution case was that Kwame had been killed by the two co-accused in retaliation for the attack on Garfield Stuart. The attackers were under the misapprehension that Kwame was a member of the rival gang. In fact he was not; he was not even from the Brixton area and had been in the estate only because he had been recording music with his friend.
The appellant admitted that he was one of the two men who was present at the scene. His case was that he had gone there with the killer, a man whom he described as "X" but whom he refused to identify.
There was in fact very extensive CCTV evidence whi