UK Judge Rules Even Archived News Articles Can Be In Contempt Of Court
from the unintended-consequences dept
Last week, the British policeman Simon Harwood was acquitted of killing a man during the 2009 G20 protests in London -- a controversial verdict given the video footage of the incident. In order not to prejudice their views, the jury was not informed that Harwood had been investigated a number of times previously for alleged violence and misconduct.
As a result of that requirement to withhold information about the earlier allegations, Associated Newspapers, which owns the Daily Mail, was found by a British judge to be in breach of the strict liability rule of the UK's Contempt of Court Act because of two stories about Harwood that it continued to hold in its archive, as this Press Gazette post explains:
Both articles were published in 2010, and had been available on the Mail Online archive since then, but only if a would-be reader actually searched for them, either on the website itself, or via a search engine.
The judge nonetheless held that the Mail Online was in contempt of court because of his interpretation of a key section in the relevant legislation:
Mr Justice Fulford held that the phrase "at the time of the publication" actually "encompasses the entire period during which the material is available on the website from the moment of its first appearance through to when it was withdrawn".
The only way to avoid this problem would be for online news archives to remove articles from their holdings in advance of future court cases. But it's hard to see how this can possibly work when applied to every case across the UK. Either the search for relevant materials will be quick and superficial, and therefore run the risk of missing articles; or it will be so slow and laborious as to render it impractical. Some owners of news archives may decide it's not worth it, and simply withdraw access altogether; that would be a highly regrettable consequence of this ruling, and a real loss for everyone.
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Filed Under: archived news, contempt, journalism, reporting
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Libraries
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Re: Libraries
And why weren't the jury allowed to know that he has been acused before? I would be hard pressed to belive that would be the case if it was a "criminal" on trial instead of a policeman...
This is simply insane.
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Re: Re: Libraries
And yes, this sort of thing can happen in any case, but usually only if there is a good defence team.
As for libraries; this new ruling (although I haven't read it yet) probably turns on the idea of "publication". There's a general rule (if a slightly odd one) that a page on a website is published every time it is viewed, whereas a physical book is published only once. The library is probably safe.
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Wouldn't it show a predisposition to commit violent acts, indicating he WAS, in fact, "a vicious, dangerous person from the start"?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Libraries
If you tell the jury that he has been accused of being a dangerous thug or something similar, they're more likely to say "we're not sure whether or not he did this, but let's lock him up anyway."
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Libraries
If mens rea (state of mind) was brought up it might be relevant, though highly unlikely, and just because someone has been found guilty of being an axe murderer bears nothing whatsoever on if at a later stage they are also charged and placed on trial for shoplifting etc. Each case is unique and has to be treated as such for impartiality.
This doesn't mean that if found guilty the historical data of previous wrongdoings is not used within a sentencing report, in fact it is normally of great relevance in sentencing and all the multiple strange guidelines that go along with sentencing.
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Re: Re: Libraries
Yes. It is insane.
But who really expects basic sanity —or even common sense— from the courts?
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Re: Re: Re: Libraries
(seriously, our courts are usually pretty good like that.)
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Technicality and Jury influence
As for the main point, this case seems similar to last week's mess with the BBC programme on the riots; in both cases you have a judge seemingly going to great lengths, inhibiting freedom of expression, to prevent a possible miscarriage of justice (i.e. jurymen being influenced by material from outside the courtroom).
I think this comes down to legal/cultural differences between countries; some courts, particularly the English and Welsh ones are very protective of their juries and will go to great lengths to ensure just verdicts are returned. It is possible they go too far sometimes.
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Re: Technicality and Jury influence
Maybe he might even survive. The first time.
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Re: Re: Technicality and Jury influence
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dude that's fucked up!
Roflmfao
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Presumption of Innocence
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Not so. Until the work is found to be in contempt, they are operating under good faith. At the moment that the status changes, then they would need to remove it promptly.
It's one of the reasons why news aggregation type site run serious risk, because they are not able to know when a story has been struck.
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Strict Liability Contempt under the Contempt of Court Act 1981
(Emphasis added.)
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Somehow, the Canadian courts have learned to live with American broadcast media violating their airwaves: IN UR TV, REPORTING ON UR COURTS. That is, when American broadcast media can be bothered enough to find Canada on a map.
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On the good news front DC police chief (aka: Cathy Lanier) announced the directives on how police officers should deal with being filmed in public/private space and it is shockingly reasonable.
Since I am an a-hole what I want to say is fucking yes!
Finally someone took some steps in the right direction.
That judge in the UK should take some cues from Ms(or is Mrs) Lanier there.
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...until i saw that her 'reasonableness' was actually 'forced' upon her as a result of a lawsuit where they screwed with someone videoing a traffic stop or some such, a year or so earlier...
remember kampers:
the price of freedom is eternal vigilance !
ALL (repeat: ALL) secret/non-transparent organizations WILL become corrupted...
repeat: WILL become corrupted, P-E-R-I-O-D.
art guerrilla
aka ann archy
eof
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Or a very nice gift for corrupt politicians who want their dumb deeds of the past to disappear and be forgotten.
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UK
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Silly
Back when someone in London would be unlikely to have easy access to, say, the L.A. Times, maybe this stuff made practical sense in the UK, even if it's something that would be anathema under the American concept of free speech.
But now those same Londoners can sit in their living room and read newspapers from New York to Seattle to New Zealand as easily as they can read their local rag, and none of those papers are subject to UK gag orders. The New York Times can publish whatever it likes about a criminal case in England and there's nothing a British judge can do about it. And that information is as readily available to the jury pool in London as the Daily Mail is.
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