BRITISH judges have misinterpreted the law on controversial “joint enterprise” murder charges for decades, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday in a landmark judgement paving the way for hundreds of legal challenges.

A panel of Supreme Court justices, in a historic first sitting with the Privy Council’s judicial committee, concluded that the law on joint enterprise had been wrongly interpreted by criminal trial judges over the past 30 years.

Joint enterprise allows for individuals to be convicted of murder as a secondary party even if they weren’t the main perpetrator in committing the act.