UK: Lawrence: whose contempt?
01 January 1997
After the Daily Mail unexpectedly revealed an anti-racist campaigning bent by publishing the names of the five men believed to have killed black youth Stephen Lawrence in April 1993 under the headline "Murderers", former Master of the Rolls Lord Donaldson condemned the paper for "contempt of court" and spoke of "trial by media". Senior judges failed to condemn scandalously prejudicial tabloid coverage of Winston Silcott at the time of his criminal trial for the killing of PC Blakelock at Broadwater Farm, which was instrumental in convicting him of the killing despite the lack of evidence. When the Court of Appeal freed the Taylor sisters in August 1993 after they had served two years for murder, the press coverage of their trial was condemned as so prejudicial as to amount to contempt of court. And Northern Ireland minister Tom King's public comment on the silence of the Winchester Three during their criminal trial in 1984 resulted in overturning of their conviction.
The difference between those comments and the Daily Mail's Valentines Day crusade is that there is no criminal trial in the Lawrence case, and there will not be. The men who were named are in no danger of going to prison because of the tabloid coverage. All have already been the subject of criminal proceedings. Two never went to trial, three were acquitted when the Lawrences' private prosecution collapsed in 1996. The headline came at the end of the inquest into Stephen's death, which resulted in the inevitable verdict of unlawful killing, and during which the five youths believed to be responsible refused to answer all questions, exercising their right against self-incrimination - including questions such as "what is your name?" They were not declared to be in contempt of court, although the words appear appropriate to describe their attitude.
While the Lawrences hope to launch a civil action against the youths for the fatal assault on their son, the case would be tried by a judge sitting alone. Attempts to influence judges by public comment are frequent (there are pickets almost daily outside the Royal Courts of Justice) and are never condemned as contempt, since judges are believed to be above being swayed in the way volatile and mysterious juries are seen to be. A trial judge hearing the case in a year's time or more is unlikely to be swayed into a belief in the youths' guilt by a distant memory of the Daily Mail headline. The Attorney-General has said no action will be taken against the Daily Mail.
Donaldson's outburst is inexplicable except on the principle that attack is the best form of defence. After all, it is the Lawrences who have been treated with contempt - by police who treated the death of the sixth-former as relatively unimportant, possibly a result of a drug-related feud, purely on the basis of Stephen's colour, and who delayed making arrests until identification was tainted by gossip; the prosecution service, which pulled the plug on the first prosecution without consulting or informing the family; the legal system in general, which has consistently failed to do justice to the Lawrences' bereavement and to the racism which caused it. Donaldson's attack puts the family in the role of aggressors by collusion, and the killers in the role of victims of injustice.
"Racist" justice system fails Lawrence family
The mother of Stephen Lawrence, the black teenager brutally stabbed to death by a racist gang in 1993, has condemned the judicial system as racist following the inquest into her son's death at Southwark Coroner's court in southeast London in February. Doreen Lawrence told the reconvened inquest how police treated her family like criminals, spending two weeks investigating their background, rather than tracking down her son's murderers.
Mrs Lawrence went on to describe the inquest as "a circus" after watching five racist gang members, who were cleared of killing her son, refuse to answer questions, claiming t