A pair of convicted murderers said the jury who found them guilty should have been given the chance to consider a lesser charge of manslaughter.
Brookton Lagan and Taison Cyrille, then both 19, were found guilty last December of fatally stabbing dad-of-three Darren MacCormick in Didcot on January 9, 2020.
The teenagers, who were sentenced to life imprisonment four days before Christmas, were also unanimously convicted of wounding two other men with intent.
But at the Court of Appeal on Thursday, lawyers for Lagan and Cyrille said their client’s convictions for murder and wounding with intent were unsafe – as the judge who tried their case should have offered jurors the chance to consider alternative charges of manslaughter and causing grievous bodily harm.
The panel of three senior judges considering the application allowed the men to take their case to a full appeal hearing, having earlier been refused permission to appeal.
Brookton Lagan (left) and Taison Cyrille (right)
Giving the court’s judgement, Mr Justice Lavender said: “We are persuaded by the able submissions of counsel that this should be considered by the full court. We therefore grant leave for appeal to each application on that ground and we say no more about the merits of it.”
Barrister Brian St Louis QC, for Lagan, told the justices that the jury should have been able to consider lesser charges of manslaughter and wounding – rather than simply murder and wounding with intent.
He said evidence presented to the jury suggested that his client had not intended to stab the man who he did assault – although not fatally – with Lagan claiming he’d deliberately stabbed him in the leg rather than elsewhere on the body.
Lagan – who was said to have carried a knife ‘to frighten people’ and had been warned previously of a threat to his life – denied stabbing Mr MacCormick. However, Cyrille’s barrister Tahir Khan QC noted that the victim’s blood was found on Lagan’s knife.
Darren MacCormick.
The justices threw out claims by Lagan’s lawyers that the jury should have been told his co-defendant had previous convictions for assaulting a police officer and threatening behaviour, committed when he was in his mid-teens.
Last year, jurors at Oxford Crown Court heard Mr MacCormick – known by the nickname ‘Dizzy’ – was stabbed during an argument that had its origins in a disputed drugs debt between his friend and Lagan.
He received a number of injuries to his arms and his right hand, as well as ‘defensive injuries’.
The fatal injury was a stab wound to the chest, which was described as 10cm deep and which caused damage to his heart. He was taken to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford but at 4.56am he was pronounced dead.
Lagan and Cyrille, both from Bicester, later attempted to flee the country and were arrested at Luton Airport.
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