Issa Seed & Ors v R

Where opposing groups deliberately engage in mutual gunfire, the necessary common purpose to shoot and be shot at may be inferred if each participant knows it is a virtual certainty that the other side is armed and will open or return fire, and each intends to kill or cause really serious injury. The victim’s membership of either side is immaterial. Self-defence is unavailable to a person who entered that reciprocal armed conflict with that intention.

When imposing life imprisonment, the court must itself calculate and pronounce the minimum term after deducting any relevant period spent on remand.

Following a jury trial at the Central Criminal Court before HH Judge Katz KC, Issa Seed, Daniel Mensah and Adel Yussuf were each convicted of conspiracy to cause grievous bodily harm with intent, murder, and possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life. The charges arose after Billy McCullagh was fatally shot during an exchange of gunfire involving rival gang groupings in Brent.

The applicants sought leave to appeal against conviction and sentence. Their principal conviction ground challenged the refusal of submissions of no case to answer on murder. They contended that the evidence could not prove an agreement with the opposing gunman to shoot and be shot at. Mensah and Yussuf also challenged evidential rulings and the sufficiency of evidence that they travelled to the scene. Seed’s sentence additionally required correction because his remand time had not been deducted when the minimum term was pronounced.

1. Disposition. The court refused all applications for leave to appeal against conviction. It refused Mensah’s application for leave to appeal against sentence and refused Yussuf’s extension-of-time application and consequential sentence application. It granted Seed leave to appeal against sentence solely to correct the minimum term, allowed his appeal to that extent, and substituted a minimum term of 26 years and 350 days.
2. The judge’s direction correctly reflected R v Gnango [2011] UKSC 59 and R v Jogee [2016] UKSC 8. A reciprocal agreement may be inferred where persons engage in, assist, or encourage mutual shooting, each knows it is virtually certain that the other side will be armed and will fire, and each intends death or really serious injury. The word shoot-out is only an imprecise shorthand; the jury must analyse whether the necessary reciprocity was proved. A participant cannot rely on self-defence where that was his intended form of armed conflict.
3. The evidence was capable of proving that each applicant travelled in the Land Rover, possessed or jointly possessed a loaded firearm, and shared the necessary common purpose. It was therefore proper to reject the submissions of no case to answer. The court also endorsed a focus on mutual loyalty and trust underlying gang association, rather than formal proof of gang membership.
4. The challenged previous-conviction and video evidence was admissible and did not render the convictions unsafe. Any shortcomings concerning the video on Farah’s phone were insufficient to affect the safety of Mensah’s convictions.
5. The sentencing challenges lacked merit. The judge correctly used the 30-year starting point under Schedule 21 to the Sentencing Act 2020 and was entitled to find Mensah dangerous. However, calculation of a life-sentence minimum term forms part of the sentence and the judge had to pronounce it after deducting Seed’s relevant remand time.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division). In [2024] EWCA Crim 650, the court refused leave to appeal against all convictions and all sentence challenges except Seed’s limited appeal to correct the calculation of his minimum term.
• Central Criminal Court. HH Judge Katz KC and a jury convicted each applicant of conspiracy to cause grievous bodily harm with intent, murder, and possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life. Each received life imprisonment for the conspiracy and murder counts, with specified minimum terms, and 15 years’ imprisonment for the firearm count.