Newspapers are coming close to prejudicing criminal trials
01 January 1991
Newspapers are coming close to prejudicing criminal trials
artdoc February=1992
News Statesman 28.2.92 Article by Jolyon Jenkins
Well, thank God they caught him, eh? The man who kidnapped that
Stephanie Slater, that is. One-legged Mike Sams was arrested
after his wife heard a tape of his voice broadcast on Crimewatch.
As usual, the Sun put it most succinctly: "NICKED!"
On inside pages, the paper gave us the full works. A picture
of "his lair", and another of his house. An interview with the
local chip shop owner: "Jose Camacho told last night how suspect
Michael Sams suddenly began splashing out with tenners in his
shop. `He started coming in regularly at the beginning of this
week and he only ever had Ã1O notes."' The paper noted:
"Stephanie Slater told detectives she had been fed a meal of fish
and chips during her long ordeal." And on and on.
The coverage continued over the weekend and into this week,
making the lead in most of Monday's tabloids, which reported that
Sams had been charged with the kidnapping on Sunday night. Police
told journalists that he was not being charged with the murder
of Julie Dart "at this stage", although they let it be known that
he had been questioned about it.
The anguished liberal bleats that Mr Sams is innocent until
proved guilty. But in vain. The whole logic of news gathering
goes against such nice distinctions. -Me shift from "Police hunt
kidnapper" through "Police closing on kidnapper" to "Police
arrest kidnap man" is seamless. By the time a n put to the man
being held, it is too late for prissy insertion of the word
"allege( to counter the impression that the police have got their
man.
There ought to be a law against it. Indeed, there is a law
against it: the Contempt of Court Act 1981. Time was when editors
used to go to prison for contempt of court In 1949, the editor
of the Daily Mirror was gaoled for three months, and the
publisher fined 10,000. The paper had described a man charged
with murder as a "vampire", and reported that he had committed
other murders, giving the names of the victims. In the 1920s,
various papers were fined for printing the results of their
extensive "criminal investigations".
Under the Contempt of Court Act, it is an offence to publish
anything that "creates a substantial risk that the course of
justice ... will be seriously impeded or prejudiced." There is
also the older common law offence of publishing anything that is
intended to interfere with the course of justice. (The first
offence is one of "strict liability": it doesn't matter what your
intention was.)
It seems to me that newspapers, though no often in the
"vampire" class, are coming dangerously close to overstepping the
mark. Perhaps the worst case recently happened last summer, when
the body of a missing student, Catherine Hauling, was discovered
in the boot of a car at Gatwick airport. Soon afterwards, the
police applied for an extradition order against a man who had
flown to America hours previously. The newspapers printed not
just his name, but copious amounts of information about him, all
implying that he was the murderer. The Daily Mail for example,
reported that he was "obsessed", and that he had daubed "Cathy
is dead" on the door of her sister's home.
The Attorney General is taking a surprisingly relaxed line on
this, letting newspapers get away with more than they used to,
and allowing them to publish material that blatantly prejudices
someone's chances of getting a fair trial. It is all the odder
when you consider what has been happening with other bits of
contempt law. The Attorney General recently tried to get a
Guardian journalist gaoled for contempt over an article in 1989
that simply reported that a defendant in one fraud trial faced
charges in another trial. Last week, the High Court threw out the
case against the Guardian. Then there was the case of Bill
Goodwin, a young reporter on the Eng