Three men have had their murder convictions in Moss Side referred to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), after a review of new evidence and arguments which undermine the ‘gang narrative’ relied on by the prosecution at trial.
Durrell Goodall, Reano Walters and Trey Wilson, who were 20, 19 and 19 when they were convicted, were jailed in August 2017 for the joint enterprise murder of Abdul Hafidah, 18, in Manchester in May 2016.
In total, thirteen men were charged with the murder, and were tried at two separate trials at Manchester and Preston Crown Courts.
Mr Goodall, Mr Walters and Mr Wilson were convicted of murder in the second trial. Mr Goodall was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 16 years. Mr Walters and Mr Wilson were sentenced to 20 years each.
The CCRC received applications for Mr Goodall, Mr Walters and Mr Wilson in May 2023. Their submissions include multiple expert reports criticising the prosecution’s trial evidence, especially but not only attacking testimony from a police officer about gang membership. They note the lack of defence argument around gang narrative and criticise the judge’s directions to the jury on the same theme. They assert that many of the images relied on by the prosecution at trial do not denote gang affiliation.
The CCRC has reviewed this carefully prepared case and obtained written responses to this new evidence from each applicant’s trial counsel. It has determined that there is a real possibility the Court of Appeal will find the fresh evidence materially undermines the prosecution case at trial in a key way, which may have significantly impacted the jury’s conclusions, especially in the context of a now criticised judicial direction to the jury.
CCRC Chair Dame Vera Baird KC said:
“This referral highlights the need for safeguards to protect defendants against the risk of unfairness from a too readily adopted gang narrative, based on inappropriate labelling.
“It is possible that there are other cases which would benefit from guidance on this issue, where the fear may be that stereotypes can be wrongly introduced as evidence.”
