A man convicted of offences including the murder of Nathan Marshall and attempted murder of Aaron Baker in December 2018 at Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court has had his case referred to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC)
Jonathan Snape prior to the trial,pleaded guilty to four counts including the manslaughter of Mr Marshall (an alternative to murder) and unlawful wounding of Mr Baker (an alternative to attempted murder).
He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 24 years.
The issue for the jury was mainly around intent and transferred malice, as the prosecution case was that Mr Snape had intended to kill Mr Baker, with whom he had had a fight earlier.
He had subsequently driven a car towards Mr Baker’s group but ended up hitting his friend, Mr Marshall, who later died from his injuries.
Questions have since been raised around the taking of jury verdicts on the count of murder of Mr Marshall, attempted murder of Mr Baker, and wounding Mr Baker with intent.
Unanimous guilty verdicts were taken on 17 December 2018 to count one (murder of Mr Marshall) and count three (wounding Mr Baker with intent).
The jury were then discharged but concerns were raised by the defence at the time about the validity of the verdicts and whether they were in fact unanimous.
It was agreed that the judge would bring back the jury the following day to repeat the procedure of taking the verdicts. However, when the jury returned the following day, they went into a further period of retirement and a majority direction was given. Following this, new verdicts were taken and the jury found Mr Snape guilty by a majority on count one (murder of Mr Marshall) and count two (attempted murder of Mr Baker).
Mr Snape applied for leave to appeal against his convictions and sentence to the Court of Appeal.
Leave to appeal conviction was refused in April 2019 and Mr Snape renewed his application to the Full Court.
The Full Court refused the application in December 2019, stating the convictions could not be considered unsafe. It dismissed the appeal against sentence stating that the sentence ‘comes nowhere near being manifestly excessive’.
Mr Snape’s representative applied to the CCRC in April 2023, raising concerns about the way in which the verdicts were taken. Following investigation of the way in which the verdicts were taken, the CCRC has determined that this point provides a real possibility the Court of Appeal will find Mr Snape’s convictions unsafe.
