Justice For Ryan - Ryan’s Law.....  

We have suffered a gross miscarriage of justice and desperately need your help so that we can change our laws. Currently our justice system and our  current laws are failing the victims and their families of knife crime up and down our country.

We are demanding a change in our Criminal Justice System to allow the right for victim’s families in serious crime cases to challenge and appeal serious “perverse” jury acquittal verdicts. That is one that went against the law or against the evidence or which “no reasonable jury could have come to”

Our story.......

Ryan was a normal 24-year-old who had gone out with his lifelong friend on a night out to Chicago’s nightclub in our home town Stourbridge, but never returned home.

Sadly, our Ryan was brutally taken away from us in the early hours of Sunday 6th August 2017 due to being fatally stabbed to death inside Chicago’s nightclub in Stourbridge. 

A altercation took place on the dance floor between Ryan's best friend, Ryan and another group of lads, lasting just a few seconds which resulted in Ryan being fatally stabbed through his heart. Ryan was not armed with any weapon and no other individuals but Ryan were injured at all.

Ryan was just aged 24 with his whole life ahead of him. Those who knew Ryan will know he was one of the kindest, loving, genuine and happiest of people you could ever wish to meet. He loved and lived life for his family and his friends.

On the 6th February 2018 at Birmingham Crown Court, this country’s justice system let the man who admitted in front of a jury to stabbing & killing our Ryan walk free from court, without any punishment what so ever for his actions. 

• He admitted in front of the jury to lying about being intoxicated at the time of stabbing Ryan and was in fact sober
• He admitted he stabbed Ryan (Saying to the jury "He Felt Bone")
• CCTV captured him immediately running out of the nightclub with friends.
• He then discarded the knife in undergrowth several miles away from the club which police later recovered
• His clothes and mobile phone have never been found
• He then went into hiding at a flat in Tipton
• When interviewed by Detectives he replied NO COMMENT to every single police question
• When a doctor carried out a full body medical whilst in custody, NO MARKS could be found on his body to indicate he had been attacked

The prosecution evidence presented to jury was overwhelming in support of a Murder conviction, so we the family & friends, along with the police and the prosecution legal team and the whole of our community, cannot understand or comprehend how the jury got the decision “so devastatingly wrong” in returning a “Not Guilty” verdict and letting him walk free.

The Jury decided that NO OFFENCE had taken place, even though he admitted to being in possession of the knife in a public place (a nightclub) and used it with such force (Stating that he felt bone!) that it penetrated through Ryan’s chest bone and heart, fatally killing him.

And because he told the jury "he did not intend to harm Ryan"...... they decide that is ok then. You will not face any sentence at all for killing Ryan?

For us, it is very clear.... Ryan was "MURDERED on the 6th August 2017! 

The force and actions used was not reasonable or lawful in the circumstances?

The acquittal decision in our trial makes a mockery of our jury system and is an affront to justice. The acquittal verdict in our case is a gross miscarriage of justice and is manifestly illegitimate.

Victims of crime and their families suffer immense distress and torture, when a person that is so clearly guilty “as in our case” has been wrongly acquitted.

Our own MP - Margot James has written to the Solicitor General Robert Buckland QC, saying "It is incomprehensible to me that the jury could come to such a conclusion given the evidence and testimony available to them”.

Our campaign for Justice......

We demand a change in our Criminal Justice System to allow the right for victims in serious crime cases to challenge and appeal “perverse” jury verdicts after acquittal.

At present the families of victims have no right of appeal against a perverse acquittal by a jury.

It is currently not a fair or equal judicial system when a judge and jury can be held to be wrong when the accused has been convicted, but are infallible when the accused has been acquitted.

The Court of Appeal can allow an appeal against conviction if they think a conviction is unsafe. Yet there are no current rights that allow an appeal if they think an acquittal is unsafe.

Firstly, we want to change our Criminal Justice System to allow the right for victim’s families in serious crime cases to challenge the jury's perverse acquittal decision. That is one that went against the law or against the evidence or which “no reasonable jury could have come to”.

Before this happens, the law needs to provide for juries to give reasons for their decisions. At the moment they simply indicated “guilty” or “not guilty” without any indication as to how they arrived at their decision. This prevents there from being any objective analysis of the reasonableness of the decision, and whether the jury approached the evidence in the proper manner.

We are calling for immediate changes in law to allow for victims families that there should be a legal right for juries to give reasons for their decisions. Especially perverse jury verdicts. -  "That is one that went against the law or against the evidence or which “no reasonable jury could have come to".

These archaic rules against the appeal rights for victims of perverse acquittals are not fit and not acceptable in a modern democratic society such as ours that we live in today.

Even going back to December 1999, the then Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine, commissioned a review into the practices and procedures of the criminal courts. The review was conducted in 2001 by Lord Justice Auld and had as its stated objective that of "ensuring that the courts deliver justice fairly".

He campaigned to amend the Criminal Justice Act for reform of the trial system, including the recommendation that in “serious crime cases, perverse acquittal verdicts by juries should be subject to appeal”.

Lord Justice Auld was not proposing to abolish the jury system, but the proposal to subject perverse acquittal verdicts to review. 

Our Justice System already acknowledges that Jury’s can make wrong decisions as history has shown us with the number of unsafe convictions subsequently overturned at the court of appeal.

So...... if we are to accept that Jury’s can make wrongful conviction decisions, then surely it is only right, fair and proper that we have to accept they can also make wrong decisions regarding acquittals?

We owe it not only to Ryan, but to the whole of our society and the communities that we all live in, that we fight to get this huge miscarriage of justice corrected. We will fight on.... We must do... to ensure the values of equality, fairness and accountability are maintained for all within our criminal justice system. 

To help us make this change in law a reality, we ask you to please do the following:

1. Write to your Local MP and ask them to support our Justice For Ryan Campaign 

2. Please sign and share this petition amongst your family & friends

3. Please help us raise vital funds towards helping towards our ongoing legal costs by donating on our official fundraising page: https://www.justiceforryan.org

I have no words that can even begin to describe the immense pain, torture and suffering that this devastating jury’s decision has had on Ryan’s Mom, Dad, family and friends, and together we can all make a stand and prevent anyone else from experiencing the pain and grief suffered from serious perverse jury acquittals.

We should all receive equal treatment before the law. We should all have a say on what the law is, through our democratically elected representatives in Parliament.

And we should have a fair and functioning corrective; an appeals system to step in when things go wrong!!!

Thank you everyone for all your support.

We'll keep you updated with our progress. 

email us at info@justicefroryan.org