Tas v R. (joint enterprise)

A participant in a continuing violent joint enterprise may be guilty of manslaughter where he intentionally assists or encourages unlawful violence intended to cause some harm, and death results. Knowledge that another participant carried or used a particular weapon is evidence of intention, but is not a prerequisite to liability.

An overwhelming supervening act relieves liability only where it was beyond anything a person in the defendant’s position could have contemplated and relegates that person’s conduct to history. A mere escalation of a planned or continuing violent attack does not meet that test. Whether there is sufficient evidence to leave that issue to the jury is ordinarily for the trial judge.

Ali Tas appealed against his conviction for manslaughter at the Central Criminal Court. He had been acquitted of murder after a co-defendant fatally stabbed Djojo Nsaka during a confrontation involving Tas and two co-defendants.

Tas accepted punching another member of Nsaka’s group but denied knowing that either co-defendant had a knife. He contended that he had withdrawn before the stabbing and that the knife’s use was an overwhelming supervening event. The trial judge declined to leave that possibility to the jury and directed that participation in a joint enterprise intending some harm could found manslaughter if death resulted.

The central issue was whether lack of knowledge of the knife required a supervening-event direction or precluded manslaughter liability.

1. Appeal dismissed. The judge was entitled to decline to leave overwhelming supervening event to the jury. The jury’s verdict, on the route to verdict, necessarily established Tas’s participation in a continuing joint enterprise in which Nsaka was stabbed.

2. Applying R v Jogee; Ruddock v The Queen [2016] UKSC 8, the court held that the inquiry is whether the secondary participant intentionally encouraged or assisted the crime. A participant in a violent attack who does not intend death or really serious harm, but intends some harm, is guilty of manslaughter if the violence escalates and death results.

3. Knowledge or ignorance of a weapon is evidence relevant to intention. It is not an independent condition of liability. It would be inconsistent with Jogee to make knowledge of the weapon a prerequisite for manslaughter through the doctrine of supervening act.

4. The exception remains narrow. An intervening act must be one which no person in the defendant’s position could have contemplated and which relegates the defendant’s earlier acts to history. The use of a knife during this continuing, moving street attack was capable of being an escalation rather than such an event. On the evidence, the judge was better placed to decide that there was no sufficient evidential basis for the exception.

5. Tas had not become sufficiently distant in time, place or circumstances from the stabbing. The jury could regard his earlier violence and his continuing role in positioning the car to collect the others as encouragement or assistance. The decision was distinguishable from R v Rafferty [2007] EWCA Crim 1846, where the secondary party had left and the later drowning was a new intervening act.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): Dismissed Tas’s appeal against conviction for manslaughter: [2018] EWCA Crim 2603 .
• Central Criminal Court: On 9 August 2017, Tas was convicted by a jury of manslaughter and acquitted of murder. He was sentenced the following day to 90 months’ detention in a young offender institution.