The High Court has certified that a miscarriage of justice occurred in the murder conviction of Yusuf Ali Abdi, after a retrial jury found him not guilty by reason of insanity and psychiatric experts agreed he had schizophrenia when he killed his son.
Mr Justice Alexander Owens made the ruling on an application under section 9 of the Criminal Procedure Act 1993. The application followed the 2019 retrial, at which Mr Abdi was acquitted of murdering his son Nathan on 17 April 2001. The jury returned the special verdict that he was not guilty by reason of insanity.
The judge said the acquittal met the legal requirement for compensation to be considered under section 9. He rejected the State’s submission that the nature of the activity proved at trial meant the special verdict was not an acquittal. The judgment does not determine or award a compensation amount.
Mr Abdi was convicted of murder at his first trial in 2003. The jury then rejected his insanity defence and evidence that he had schizophrenia. His appeal was unsuccessful. Years later, psychiatrists at the Central Mental Hospital diagnosed schizophrenia. The Court of Appeal set aside the conviction in 2019 and ordered a retrial, finding that the confirmed diagnosis and related material were newly discovered facts indicating a real risk of a miscarriage of justice.
At the retrial, all psychiatric experts who gave evidence accepted that Mr Abdi had schizophrenia when he killed his son. The judge said this was a decisive change from the evidence at the 2003 trial, when the prosecution’s psychiatric position was that he did not have an illness that prevented him from understanding that his actions were wrong or resisting a psychotic impulse. Dr Mohan, who gave evidence at both trials, no longer held that earlier view.
The judge said the central issue for the section 9 application was whether newly discovered facts showed that something fundamental had gone wrong in the original trial and led to a wrongful conviction. He concluded that the later medical history demonstrated that a fundamental factual element underlying the conviction and rejection of the insanity defence was incorrect.
The court therefore ruled that the statutory test was met and that a certificate must issue. The judgment addressed the certificate application; it did not specify a compensation sum or make a compensation award.