A WOMAN convicted of the murder of a father of two in a pub car park is hoping to have her conviction overturned by the Court of Appeal today after an 11-year campaign.

Laura Mitchell was convicted of the murder by joint enterprise in September 2007 and sentenced to life with a minimum of 13 and a half years, and three-and-a-half years concurrently for violent disorder, but she is hoping a Supreme Court ruling on joint enterprise in 2017 will lead to her being freed.

She said at her trial that she was involved in an earlier dispute over a taxi but she was not present when Andrew Ayres, 50, was stamped to death outside the King’s Head, in Halifax Road, Buttershaw.

Mitchell told the court she was knocked to the ground during the brawl outside the King’s Head and then, when the incident eased, she was busy looking for shoes on one side of the car park when she became aware of an incident on the other side.

She denied she had seen a man called Carl Holmes stamp on Mr Ayres’s head and had been supporting what was going on.

She was 22 and a Buttershaw mother of a five-year-old son at the time. She was hoping to train to become a midwife.

Mitchell, her boyfriend Michael Hall, 24, and 20-year-old Henry Ballantyne were all convicted of murder and violent disorder arising out of the death of Mr Ayres, who was known as Ted, in January 2007.

He suffered fatal injuries when he was attacked in the early hours, after being stamped on, punched and hit with a mace as he lay defenceless.

Holmes, 21, of Buttershaw, admitted the murder of Mr Ayres, from Queensbury.

A fifth defendant Jason Fawthrop, 25, of Buttershaw, Bradford, was acquitted by the jury of murder and violent disorder.

A previous appeal against Mitchell’s conviction was thrown out but her case has now been referred back to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

Her solicitor Simon Natas said the case had been referred back not on any fresh evidence but because the legal principles behind her conviction had been changed.

He said: “The Criminal Cases Review Commission has applied its own test that there is a real possibility that the conviction will be quashed.

“It won’t refer [to the Court of Appeal] unless that test is met.

“We’re hopeful but we have to wait for the Court of Appeal to hear the arguments.”

He said his argument on Mitchell’s behalf was that the jury would not have convicted her had the law on joint enterprise been different.

Mr Natas was involved in the case that changed the interpretation of the law on joint enterprise, acting for the campaign group Joint Enterprise Not Guilty by Association (JENGbA) in the Supreme Court appeal of Regina v Jogee.

The court ruled that having “foresight” that the primary defendant might commit the act was not enough for a conviction.

Gloria Morrison, of JENGbA, who has been supporting Mitchell in her campaign, said she was hopeful that her conviction would be overturned but said it was very difficult to win at the Court of Appeal.

She said: “We are very hopeful and pray that Laura gets her result, she deserves it.

“How can you be convicted of murder when you didn’t do it? She had nothing to do with it but you have to serve a mandatory life sentence.”

She said she had seen Mitchell two weeks ago and said her son, who is now 17, was thinking of studying law.

“She has missed her son growing up. None of that needed to have happened.

“She is really lovely but really nervous. The Court of Appeal will never do anything if they turn this down but I’m hopeful they will do the right thing.

“Laura did not kill anyone.”

Ms Morrison said she had heard Mitchell’s co-accused Michael Hall described as one of the best people in the prison system.

He also appealed his conviction for joint enterprise to the Court of Appeal further to the ruling in Jogee but his was one of five cases in which applications for leave to appeal were refused.

Other people from the Bradford district convicted under joint enterprise include Andrew Feather, who was convicted of being the getaway driver in the Barry Selby acid attack murder in 2014; Anthony Davies, who was one of five men convicted of the murder of Bradford businessman Teddy Simpson in August 2007; and Mohammed Niaz Khan, Abid Ashiq Hussain and Sharaz Yaqub – known as the Bradford 3 – who were given jail sentences totalling nearly 90 years after father-of-four Shazad Hussain, 21, was shot dead at point blank range in his car off Leeds Road, Bradford, in September 2004.

Ms Morrison, whose group has 800 cases on their books, added: “It is a bad law, common law made up by judges.

“The Court of Appeal are very reluctant. They would have to accept they have got the law wrong for 34 years.

“They don’t want to admit they are making mistakes. They don’t want to set a precedent.”