The Royal Courts of Justice are a place defined by anachronism. Lawyers wearing sombre expressions and powdered wigs stalk the dimly lit, stone-clad corridors. Leather-bound volumes of case law fill the dark wood shelves that hem in visitors to the public gallery. In a corner of the courtroom, a wrought iron cage awaits its next defendant. Sitting in the appeal hearing for the Manchester 10, the court’s Gothic architecture felt not merely aesthetic, but a reflection of the UK justice system’s struggle to keep pace with the modern world.

In December, the court heard from seven members of the Manchester 10, a group of Black boys convicted of a range of violent offences based largely on the contents of Telegram chats and Snapchat videos. In 2022, the boys and men were sentenced to between eight and 21 years in prison. Their case is a microcosm of British society, its demonisation of Black and youth cultures, and its antiquated approach to justice.

The story of the Manchester 10 dates back to bonfire night 2020 and the fatal stabbing of 16-year-old John Soyoye. An aspiring drill rapper under the pseudonyms MD and Morsely, Soyoye was alleged by police to have been part of a North Manchester-based gang called M40, involved in not just music – Brit Award winner Aitch was an associate of M40 during the early part of his career – but also in drug dealing and violence.

In the days following Soyoye’s killing, a group of seven of his friends set up a Telegram chat to mourn him. The police have argued the channel was also intended for M40 members to coordinate reprisals against a Rochdale-based gang called RTD, seven of whose members were later convicted for killing Soyoye. The messages in that Telegram chat ended up forming much of the evidence against the Manchester 10: four were convicted of conspiracy to murder, six of conspiracy to commit grievous bodily harm.

Those convicted of conspiracy to commit GBH weren’t involved in any violence arising from the group chat, and some only contributed to the conversation for a matter of minutes. All were nonetheless sentenced to eight years, those convicted of conspiracy to murder to 20 or 21 years. All but one of the 10 defendants were children at the time of their alleged offences.

Earlier this month, three court of appeal judges quashed the conviction of Ademola Adedeji and reduced two other prisoners’ sentences, as well as lifting reporting restrictions around their and others’ appeals. Yet the joy felt by their families has been tempered by the fact that seven others remain behind bars. Kids of Colour, the campaign group which has supported and advocated for the 10, described the court’s decision as “deeply bittersweet.”

The Manchester 10, their legal teams and supporters have argued that all 10 convictions were tainted by the use of misleading and highly emotive evidence around gang affiliations and drill music. A key part of the evidence presented against the now-exonerated Ademola Adedeji was a nine-second Snapchat video. It showed a Black boy sitting on a sofa, wearing a blue bandana and freestyling over a drill beat. The CPS claimed that the person in that video was Adedeji, draped in the colours of the M40 gang.

Since his arrest, Adedeji has argued that the person in the video was not him, but someone from his neighbourhood called Tyrone (he didn’t know his surname), but defence lawyers at his first trial didn’t pursue this lead. However, his new legal team was able to track down a local man called Tyrone Numa, who testified to the court that it was indeed him in the video.

PC Lucas McGregor, the officer responsible for incorrectly identifying Adedeji in the video, did so based on a brief interview he conducted after Adedeji handed himself in. He made no notes outlining his thought process when later watching the video, and when cross-examined at trial couldn’t explain his reasons for connecting it back to Adedeji. In his appearance at the court of appeal two years later, Numa sat in the witness box next to a TV screen playing the video on a loop – it was abundantly clear that they were the same person. Numa turned out to have no criminal record, and no links whatsoever to M40 or other violence.

What’s more, the CPS seemed to have warped what was said in the video to adhere to a particular narrative. Listening to the video in the court of appeal, I heard the words clearly: “Ey, ey, ey, D,” says the person filming, speaking to the person sitting on the sofa. “Why you so rude?” This is the same form of words PC McGregor describes having heard in his initial witness statement. But the CPS later amended that statement – first to claim that the words being spoken were “RD, why are you so rude?”, then “RTD, you’re so rude”.

In addition to the nine-second video, the prosecution also used photos showing Adedeji and other defendants holding stacks of cash to their ear. They alleged that this was a gesture shared between M40 members and further evidence of their gang connections. Yet the “money phone” has been a part of US hip-hop culture since at least 2017, portrayed online by 50 Cent, Future and Drake amongst countless others.

“The attempt to submit images of a money phone as ‘gang activity’ is breathtaking cultural ignorance and laziness that could have been preempted by entering the words ‘money phone’ into any internet search engine,” wrote Kevin Liles, former president of Def Jam Records, in a statement provided to Adedeji’s lawyers for his appeal. “At worst, it is a knowingly cynical and racist attempt to criminalise hip-hop and Black culture. It is disturbing, shameful, and should raise questions about other evidence connected to hip-hop culture submitted by the prosecution.”

Despite searching Adedeji’s phone, the police found no evidence of gang affiliations, violence or drug dealing – they couldn’t even find a photo of him wearing blue. By linking him to not only M40 but also RTD, the video became central to the prosecution’s case against Adedeji. Once it became clear that the video didn’t mean what the police said it meant – being connected to neither Adedeji nor M40 more widely – the quashing of his conviction became inevitable.

Adedeji’s lawyers argue that these mistakes, and the unconscious assumptions revealed by them, should call into question all 10 convictions. “When you have a situation where the court has agreed that the crux of the prosecution’s argument was wrong,” Keir Monteith KC, the barrister who acted for Adedeji, told me over the phone, “it should follow that the basis of the entire case is fundamentally flawed.” Monteith described elements of the prosecution’s approach as “amongst the most objectionable I have seen” – strong language given barristers’ general reluctance to criticise each other.

In 2021, the legal reform charity Justice published a report on racial injustice in the youth justice system. The report specifically criticised the poorly regulated use of drill lyrics and alleged gang affiliations as evidence in criminal trials. It also argued that stereotyping and “adultification” – the process by which young people of colour are treated as adults, and therefore more culpable than their white peers – have been used to “strengthen weak cases” and “implicitly [appeal] to racial stereotypes” (despite being 17 years old at the time of his arrest, Adadeji repeatedly met with the lawyers at his original trial without his parents present). In a 2023 study, Manchester University research revealed that drill lyrics had been used to prosecute at least 253 defendants since the start of the 2020s.

Often, these lyrics are analysed in court by so-called expert witnesses – usually not experts at all but rank-and-file police officers. UK courts don’t require self-identified experts on drill music to have any specific expertise or qualifications. Nor is there any requirement for a genuinely independent expert not appointed by the CPS to offer juries a second opinion on what a piece of evidence might mean.

Speaking to Novara Media, Justice’s legal policy manager Emma Snell explained their decision to intervene in Adedeji’s appeal. “We were just really concerned about this tenuous use of evidence, and the fact that ‘gang’ narratives are so embedded in the minds of the public,” she explained. “When you’re talking about complex cultural phenomena, in terms of the way young people in particular communities interact, having a police officer giving expert evidence on what these cultural phenomena mean can be really powerful in the minds of the juries, particularly when it’s not challenged by any other alternative viewpoint.”

In the court of appeal’s judgment, Lord Justice Dingemans passingly acknowledges that “it is obviously important to ensure that … groups of friends or individuals sharing an interest in music are not unfairly labelled as gangs,” – deeper consideration of how this may have affected the Manchester 10, or might have broader ramifications, is conspicuous by its absence.

Also supporting the Manchester 10 has been Art Not Evidence, a charity set up to campaign against the misuse of drill lyrics in criminal prosecutions. Their co-founder Elli Brazzill told Novara Media that despite Adedeji’s overturned conviction, the court of appeal’s refusal to consider the wider issues raised by the case was disappointing – and evidence that the mistakes that led to Adedeji’s wrongful conviction are likely to recur. “The fact that not a single element of institutional racism was mentioned, the fact that it was ignored, shows that we’ve got a lot of work to do,” she said. “It just felt like words, without any action.”

Contacted by Novara Media, the CPS shared a boilerplate statement they had shared after the appeal judgement: “This was a complex case where the evidence was carefully assessed for each individual in respect of each charge.

“Based on fresh evidence not available at the time of the trial, Ademola Adedeji’s conviction has been quashed by the court of appeal. We respect the decision of the Court and will not be seeking a retrial.”