Attorney General: Contempt of Court, why it still matters
12 October 2010
The Attorney General,Dominic Grieve QC MP, has delivered the Criminal Bar Association's Kalisher lecture entitled "Contempt of Court: why it still matters".
He explored the balance between the right of free speech and importance of open justice on one hand and the need to protect the administration of that justice on the other, and commented on how he approaches his own responsibilities in relation to contempt.
He argued that the challenges posed by the growth of the internet, and changes to the admissibility of previous convictions and other evidence, strengthen the rationale for the contempt laws as they are rather than undermine them.
As to the internet. the Attorney said that there is an important difference between material that could be found by deliberate searches and material which appears on mainstream sites: although juries "can be trusted not to research a case on the internet as directed...that does not to my mind permit established news organisations, whose websites are by their own admission increasingly being relied on instead of their traditional print versions, to publish potentially prejudicial material. To allow that could lead to the rapid growth of news campaigns and widespread dissemination of prejudicial material during the most sensitive time of a criminal case, namely when it is at trial. This material can...be brought, quite inadvertently, to the attention of a juror. In other words the dissemination of such material during the course of a trial will almost inevitably cause problems to a trial's process."
In respect of admissibility of previous convictions and bad character evidence the Attorney said that the admissibility of evidence is a matter for the Court and to pre-empt that by publishing material ahead of the Court's ruling would undermine that principle and, in turn, the administration of justice.