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KENNETH ALEXANDER
Ken has been convicted of murder and sentenced to the mandatory minimum of 15 years under section 269 – 270 Criminal Justice Act 2003.
Kenneth and two friends (DR & CG) were waiting in a car in Chiswick High Street when they saw a man (IC) that DR explained had been bullying him so aggressively he was now too scared to leave his house. DR decided to follow IC into McDonalds to ask him to stop the bullying. In turn, IC immediately became violent and threw a chair at him. Kenneth and CG ran into the McDonalds to aid DR and a fight broke out. Kenneth is captured on CCTV apologising to IC’s girlfriend before they left, stating that he didn’t want any trouble.
Kenneth and his friends returned to their car and drove home to DR’s house. As CG was parking outside the house, IC arrived accompanied by another car. They attempted to block CG’s vehicle in. An object was thrown, or fired, at the windscreen shattering it and CG had to mount the pavement and blew a tyre trying to get away. They drove to another friend’s house (DP) to fix the car but as they arrived back to DR’s house accompanied by DP, IC returned with two men and Kenneth approached them. He talked to them, reiterating that he had already apologised in McDonalds when suddenly IC struck Kenneth over the back of the head with his belt buckle, knocking him to the floor. When asked in court how hard he had struck Kenneth, IC said “hard enough to knock him out”. In the ensuing fight, witnessed by Kenneth from the ground, one of IC’s friends was fatally stabbed and IC was wounded.
When arrested, DP and CG lied from the outset but later changed their statements. DR absconded and left the country. Kenneth, however gave a clear and honest account of what had happened. He had been training to be a Youth Offending Officer and believed that because of the seriousness of the crime telling the truth was the right thing to do. He had witnessed CG stabbing IC, but he did not see the fatal stabbing. Moreover, the Judge noted that at no point did anyone say Kenneth had a knife and the murder weapon has not been found.
The entire case for the Crime Prosecution Service was based on Kenneth’s testimony. The barristers representing CG and DP branded him a liar and dismissed his manner of polite compliance as a charade. DR (having returned to this country) is currently being charged with a lesser offence of ‘violent conduct’ only for the affray in McDonalds.
The case against Kenneth, of joint enterprise to commit murder, is fraught with anomalies. The police and CPS, knew the only way to get a conviction was to argue that the incident was a ‘revenge attack’ but Kenneth and his friends did not go after IC. IC and his friends, including the murder victim came after them - TWICE. IC had been seriously intimidating DR, he knew where DR lived and he wanted revenge for the affront he believed he had suffered in McDonalds. In court, Kenneth was subject to a cut-throat defence, attacked by the other barristers in an attempt to discredit him and his testimony. This type of defence does not focus the jury’s mind on what happened but is about shifting blame.
After Ken’s conviction he was moved to a prison just outside London. A television programme made without Ken’s knowledge or co-operation about the murder case was broadcast. The programme shows how Ken co-operated with the police throughout but this was interpreted as being a ‘grass’ by fellow inmates. As a result of the immediate response Ken spent his 21st birthday in solitary confinement for his own safety. He was then transferred to Wakefield prison after inmates threatened to kill him.
As a young man far from his home, family and friends, Ken is now incarcerated in a prison that includes some of our country’s most notorious and violent prisoners. He is unable to access any of the education or rehabilitation services normally available in prisons and spends his working time translating books into Braille.
Kenneth Alexander was let down by the police, the CPS and the judicial process, which never showed him any leniency for telling the truth, yet he was the only one who showed any remorse and accepts that a terrible crime had been committed.