The conviction of a man who has served 16 years in jail for a murder he denies has been quashed by the court of appeal.
In November 2000, Jonathan Embleton was one of three men convicted of the murder of Middlesbrough pensioner Mohammed Sharif in April 1999. He was given a life sentence with a minimum term of 15 years.
On Wednesday, three judges at the court of appeal in London ruled that new information had thrown into doubt key evidence and therefore the conviction was unsafe.
Embleton, now 42, has always maintained that he was with his 16-year-old girlfriend, Tracy Wright-King, at the time of Sharif’s murder. But Wright-King was unable to recall whether he had been with her that night.
Another woman, Lindsey Clark, claimed Embleton had visited her house at around 4am on the night of the murder with a bleeding hand. But Embleton argued that he had gone to her home on another occasion after getting into a fight.
Speaking on Wednesday, Lady Justice Macur, sitting with Mr Justice Turner and Mrs Justice O’Farrell, said the disclosure of a police report that was not presented at the original trial had undermined Clark’s evidence. She refused a prosecution request for a retrial.
An officer who visited Clark before she made her statement recorded that she claimed Embleton told her he had “hit a lad”, that his girlfriend had been with him at the time and that he was going to go to hospital.
Records show that Embleton assaulted someone and visited hospital for a knuckle injury days after the murder took place.
“We conclude that Mrs Clark’s evidence was pivotal to the prosecution case against the appellant, in shoring up the otherwise weak case against him,” Lady Justice Macur said. “The new disclosure throws her evidence into doubt on a crucial point. The remaining evidence is dubious. We are not satisfied that the conviction is safe.”
Sharif, a scrap collector, was killed in his garden after he confronted men he suspected of stealing from him. He suffered a severe neck injury, a fractured eye socket and four broken ribs. His attackers left him on the ground, where he died six hours later from asphyxiation.
An initial appeal against Embleton’s conviction was dismissed in April 2003. He applied to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which investigates potential miscarriages of justice, in 2010; the body referred the case back to the appeal court last year, with 14 boxes of new evidence put forward for consideration.
Embleton’s original co-defendants, Mark Graham and Stephen Ham, remain convicted.
