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Open justice?

01 January 1991

Open justice?
artdoc August=1994

In a judgment in relation to the issue of public interest
immunity certificates (pii) by secretary of state for defence
Malcolm Rifkind to protect soldiers from giving oral evidence,
the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal rebuked Leckey for not
taking the minister's pii certificate sufficiently seriously. The
ministry was shocked when, in the inquest of three men killed by
a special unit, the 14th Intelligence company (tasked like the
RUCs E4A with person to person undercover surveillance), during
a robbery of a betting shop in Belfast, Leckey refused to follow
the normal practice of allowing soldier witnesses to give
evidence by statement rather than having to appear. He also
refused to let them give their evidence behind screens. In ruling
against the coroner, Lord Chief Justice Hutton accepted that open
justice was a very important public interest, and that the
operations of three or four undercover soldiers came very low
down in the national security stakes, but took Leckey to task for
`undervalu[ing] the importance of the Certificate setting out the
views of a Minister of the Crown'. The court directed him to
reconsider the MoD requests to screen the officers and to limit
their evidence.
In the matter of inquests touching the deaths of John McNeill,
Edward Hale and Peter Thompson, R v Coroner for Greater Belfast
ex p Ministry of Defence, June 1994.

Statewatch, Vol 4 no 4, July-August 1994