Still Think ‘Joint Enterprise’ Is An Awful Way Of Dealing With Crime, Afua?

A girl of 13 was used as 'bait' to lure a 'vulnerable' man to his death by friends who then dialled 999 to report the discovery of his beaten up body, a court heard yesterday.

The details of this ongoing case are sickening enough. God only knows what more will be revealed over the next week…

The court was played a recording of the 999 call by another member of the group, a girl who was then 16 and also cannot be identified, in which she told the operator the friends had discovered the body as they walked home.

She said: 'We have found a person. I don't know who he is or anything, but he doesn't seem to be breathing or anything. He's lying on the field face first.'

When the operator then asks her to turn the patient over on to his back, co-defendant Mark Jackson, 20, takes over the call and says his friend 'can't even look at it (the body). She's crying her eyes out'.

That’s well planned, cunning, deliberate action. It’s hard to see how their defence is going to explain it away.

Mr Latham told the jury at Nottingham Crown Court that the defendants, 'young as they are', were guilty of a 'deliberate and planned deception of the police investigation.'

The prosecutor said they were all charged with murder on the basis it was a 'joint enterprise'.

And this is the sort of thing left-wing lawyers and ‘social justice’ campaigners would like to rip out of the statute books, is it?

And this seems to exemplify the modern age too:

The court heard that sometime before the 999 call was made, a local resident had twice encountered Mr Rossington, who was 'breathing heavily', on the grass whilst walking to and from a friends' home nearby. The resident told police he could not rouse the victim and assumed he had been drinking or abusing drugs.

But he didn’t call an ambulance or the police. He just walked on by.

It seems the defence might be planning to rely on ‘provocation’:

The court heard the group were initially treated as witnesses by police. But Mr Latham said their claim to have all been at Shelbourne's home nearby that evening, before four of their number went out and stumbled upon Mr Rossington, had been 'cooked up'.

Over the following days some of them told friends they had set out to beat Mr Rossington up because he had propositioned the 13-year-old for a sex act.

One of the 17-year-old's told his girlfriend the girl had been texted by Mr Rossington asking if she would perform the act on him for £100.

It’ll be interesting to see if there’s any actual evidence of such a text…