The newspaper was accused of disclosing details of the previous convictions of an absconded suspect in a murder investigation, despite a prior warning from the police that any such publication would be likely to prejudice future criminal proceedings. The Attorney General applied for the publisher to be fined and the editor to be committed to prison for contempt of court.
Held: The application was dismissed. The publishers and editor of the article could only be liable for contempt under the common law. A common law contempt was committed if there was publication of an article which caused a real risk of prejudice to the due administration of justice and it had been published with the specific intent to cause such a risk to the administration of justice. In this case, it had not been shown that the editor had had that specific intention when he caused the article to be published. As a consequence, neither the publishers nor the editor was guilty of common law contempt of court.
Citations:
[1991] 1 WLR 1194
Cited by:
Cited – Dallas v The United Kingdom ECHR 11-Nov-2013
The applicant challenged her conviction for contempt of court in that whilst a juror, she researched the case before her on the internet, discovering that the defendant had faced an earlier allegation broadly similar. She now said that the . .
Cited – HM Solicitor General v Cox and Another QBD 27-May-2016
Applications for committal of the defendants for having taken photographs of court proceedings when their friend was being sentenced for murder and publishing them on Facebook. The SG urged that the offences had aggravating features taking the . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Contempt of Court
Updated: 18 May 2022; Ref: scu.518895