Misidentified in video, British man freed from jail after two years in murder conspiracy case

More than two years after he was ensnared in a murder conspiracy case, a young man was freed from prison Wednesday after Britain's Court of Appeal found that authorities had misidentified him in a video.

The man, Ademola Adedeji, 21, was among 10 young Black men from Manchester whom prosecutors had accused of conspiring to murder and maim others to avenge the death of their close friend. Their trial became a lightning rod in the country's reckoning with race and policing.

"It doesn't feel real because this happens one in a million times," Adedeji said of his release in a phone interview from his parents' home Wednesday.

Adedeji did not attack anyone. Nor did he own a weapon or deal drugs. He helped the police with their investigation. And there was no murder victim.

Nevertheless, he was convicted of conspiracy to cause grievous bodily harm with intent in 2022 and was serving an eight-year term.

Prosecutors portrayed Adedeji as a gangster, mining photos and videos from his social media posts as evidence. For example, a picture of him holding a wad of cash to his ear -- a popular Instagram pose -- was used as evidence against him.

The case relied on the fact that Adedeji, then 17, had joined a group chat on Telegram, where he and his teenage friends discussed exacting revenge days after their friend was murdered.

Adedeji sent six text messages to the group over the course of about 20 minutes, sharing the postal code of men whom he suspected of killing his friend. Nobody was harmed near the address that Adedeji shared.

Because he was charged with conspiracy along with nine other defendants, including some who did commit violent acts, it did not matter that he had not directly killed or hurt others.

The conspiracy trial grabbed the public's attention as an example of how Britain's crackdown on gangs disproportionately targets young Black men.

In the absence of a clear legal definition for a gang, the label tends to be applied disproportionately to groups of young Black men. Legal experts say such a designation helps persuade jurors of guilt.

One key piece of evidence was a dark, grainy video showing a teenager taunting rivals. Prosecutors had presented it as proof of Adedeji's gang affiliation.

The more times that prosecutors played the footage in court, the clearer it became that the man in the video was not Adedeji. A judge allowed jurors to consider the video but urged them to be cautious before deciding who was in it.

During an appeal hearing, another teenager confirmed that he, and not Adedeji, was featured in the video.

On that evidence, the three-judge appeals court quashed Adedeji's conviction. He will not be retried.

The court, the second highest in Britain, did not directly address contentions of institutional racism in the judgment. However, judges wrote that "it is vital in any case to avoid the unfair stereotyping of individuals, based on their race, as members of gangs."

Judges upheld the convictions of six men in the case but reduced the prison terms for two other defendants, Raymond Savi and Omolade Okoya, who were convicted of similar charges and sentenced to eight years in prison. Their new sentence is 4 1/2 years.

The Crown Prosecution Service, which leads prosecutions in England and Wales, said in an email that it respects the court's decision.

"This was a complex case where the evidence was carefully assessed for each individual," the service said.

Adedeji was beaming Wednesday after reuniting with his family. His parents picked him up from prison and they all stopped at Burger King before heading home. The first thing he did when he arrived, he said, was hug his younger brothers.

"How many other boys have I met in jail who are in similar situations to me that will never get this opportunity?" he said.