How Joint Enterprise Liability Neutered the Criminal Cases Review Commission in England

Abstract

In 2016 the English Supreme Court changed the law concerning joint enterprise liablity ub R v Jogee. The decision appeared to provide a remedy for secondary parties that had been convicted under the, albeit faithful application of the old law. The requirement, however, to demonstrate a substantial injustice following the subsequent case of Johnson significantly curtailed the number of appeals based on this change in the law. The substantial injustice test is applied by the English Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) prior to the application of the statutory real possibility test. Up until now, there has not been any research that examines the impact of this situation and the extent that it constricts any remedy for secondary parties convicted under joint enterprise liability.  Using findings from the first study to explore this concept this work examines the limiting effect of the substantial injustice test on the CCRC, explores the application of the corrected law from Jogee, and shows the low number of applicants to the CCRC that identify as black British, despite existing research suggesting this demographic has the highest conviction rate for joint enterprise.