After more than two years in prison for conspiracy to murder, a young man was released from prison on Wednesday after Britain’s Court of Appeal found that authorities had failed to identify him in the video.
This man, Ademola Adedeji, 21, was among ten young Black men from Manchester whom prosecutors accused of conspiring to kill and injure others to avenge the death of their best friend. Their trial turned into a lightning rod in the country’s reckoning with race and the police.
“It doesn’t feel real because this has happened a million times,” Mr Adedeji said of his release in a telephone interview from his parents’ home on Wednesday.
Mr. Adedeji did not attack anyone. And he didn’t have a weapon or sell drugs. He helped the police with their investigation. And there was no murder victim.
However, he was convicted of conspiracy to injure with intent in 2022 and was serving an eight-year sentence.
Prosecutors pointed out that Mr. Adedeji as a gangster, mining photos and videos from social media as evidence. For example, a picture of him holding a wad of money in his ear – a popular Instagram photo – was used as evidence against him.
The case depended on Mr. Adedeji, then 17 years old, had joined a group chat on Telegram, where he and his young friends discussed revenge days after their friend’s murder.
Mr. Adedeji sent six messages to the group within about 20 minutes, sharing the postcode of the men he accused of killing his friend. No one was injured near the address Mr Adedeji shared.
Because he was charged with conspiracy along with 9 other defendants, including those who committed acts of violence, it did not matter that he did not directly kill them or harm others.
The conspiracy trial drew public attention as an example of how Britain’s crackdown on gangs has disproportionately targeted young Black men.
In the absence of a clear official definition of a gang, the label is often misapplied to gangs of young Black men. Legal experts say such nominations help convince jurors that they are guilty.
Another key piece of evidence was a dark, greenish video showing a teenager taunting rivals. Prosecutors had presented evidence that Mr Adedeji was part of a gang.
When prosecutors repeatedly played the video in court, it became clear that the man in the video was not Mr. Adedeji. The judge allowed jurors to review the video but urged them to be careful before deciding who is in it.
During the hearing of the complaint, one young person confirmed that he, not Mr. Adedeji, you were there in the video.
On that evidence, a three-judge appeal court overturned Mr. Adedeji’s conviction. He will not be tried again.
The court, Britain’s second largest, has not directly dealt with institutional discrimination disputes in its rulings. However, the judges wrote that “it is important in any case to avoid unfairly looking at individuals, based on their race, as members of gangs.”
The judges agreed with the sentencing of six men in this case but reduced the sentences of two other suspects, Raymond Savi and Omolade Okoya, who were convicted of similar crimes and sentenced to eight years in prison. Their new sentence is four and a half years.
The Crown Prosecution Service, which leads prosecutors in England and Wales, wrote in an email that it respects the court’s decision.
“This was a complex case where the evidence was carefully examined on a case-by-case basis,” the ministry said.
Mr. Adedeji was bubbly on Wednesday after meeting his family. His parents picked him up from prison and they all stopped at Burger King before returning home. The first thing he did when he arrived, he said, was hug his little brothers.
“How many other boys have I met in prison who are in the same situation as me who will never get this opportunity?” he said.
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