Following his extradition from the USA in November 2016, and after a three-week trial at the Central Criminal Court, John Benson QC and Salma Lalani secured their client’s acquittal on a count of murder. The charge related to the violent death by stabbing of a young man in Edmonton on New Year’s Day in 2008. Two other men who had been extradited from Jamaica were convicted of murder in 2013. The prosecution relied heavily on CCTV footage of the attack on the victim which followed an altercation on a night bus. The alleged joint enterprise involved four men, one of whom has never been apprehended.
John Benson said that it was a difficult case requiring painstaking analysis of events recorded over several minutes on CCTV, culminating in the final fatal outcome, in order to distinguish the participation of the defendant from others who were involved and who had already been convicted.
