More than two years after being implicated in a murder conspiracy, a young man was released on Wednesday after Britain's Court of Appeal found authorities had mistakenly identified him in the video.
The man, Ademola Adedeji, 21, was among 10 young black men from Manchester charged by prosecutors with conspiracy to kill and seriously injure another person to avenge the death of his best friend. Their trials became a lightning rod for racial and police policing in this country.
“This kind of thing happens once in a million, so it doesn't seem real,” Adeji said of his release Wednesday in a phone interview from his parents' home.
Mr. Adedeji did not attack anyone. He never owned a weapon or sold drugs. He assisted the police in their investigation. And there were no murder victims.
Nevertheless, he was convicted of conspiracy to cause grievous bodily harm with intent in 2022 and served an eight-year term.
Prosecutors described Mr. Adediji as a gangster and unearthed photos and videos from his social media posts as evidence. For example, a photo of him holding a wad of money to his ear (a popular pose on Instagram) was used as evidence against him.
The case is based on the fact that Adeji, then 17, joined a Telegram group chat where he discussed outright revenge with his teenage friends days after their friend was murdered.
Adedeji sent six text messages to the group in about 20 minutes, sharing the postal code of the man suspected of killing his friend. There was no damage near the address Adedeji shared.
He was charged with conspiracy along with nine other defendants, including those who committed acts of violence, so it didn't matter whether he directly killed or injured others.
The conspiracy trial attracted national attention as an example of how Britain's crackdown on gangs disproportionately targets young black men.
Because there is no clear legal definition of a gang, the label tends to be applied disproportionately to a group of young black men. Legal experts say such designations can help persuade jurors to convict.
One key piece of evidence was a dark, grainy video of the teenagers taunting their rivals. Prosecutors presented this as evidence of Mr. Adeji's gang affiliation.
The more times prosecutors played the footage in court, the more it became clear that the man in the video was not Adedeji. The judge allowed jurors to review the video, but urged them to be cautious before deciding who was in it.
At the appeals court, another teenager admitted that it was him, not Mr. Adediji, who appeared in the video.
Based on that evidence, a three-judge Court of Appeal reversed Mr. Adeji's conviction. He will not be retried.
Britain's second highest court did not directly address allegations of systemic racism in its judgment. But the justices said, “In all cases, it is important to avoid unfairly stereotyping individuals as gang members on the basis of their race.”
Although the judge upheld the convictions of six men in the case, he also upheld the convictions of two other defendants, Raymond Savi and Omolade Okoya, who were convicted of similar offenses and sentenced to eight years in prison. The sentence was commuted. Their new sentences are four and a half years.
The Crown Prosecution Service, which leads prosecutions in England and Wales, said in an email that it respected the court's decision.
The service said: “This was a complex case and the evidence was carefully assessed on a case-by-case basis.”
Adeji looked beaming after being reunited with his family on Wednesday. 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 was hug his younger brothers.
“How many other boys have I met in prison who are in the same situation as me and will never have this opportunity?” he said.
