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05/12/94 - Attorney General
to face challenge over murder case
PATRICIA WYNN DAVIES, Political Correspondent
Independent
A legal challenge to Sir Nicholas Lyell, the Attorney
General, for taking no action over sensationalised reporting
of a murder trial was almost thwarted by the withdrawal
of legal aid days before a judge was due to hear the case.
Sir Nicholas will come under fire in the High Court tomorrow
over a decision not to bring charges of contempt of court.
But this is happening only after a strong protest by the
solicitor for Michelle and Lisa Taylor, the sisters cleared
by the Court ofAppeal of murdering Alison Shaughnessy.
Three Court of Appeal judges set aside the sisters' murder
convictions and life sentences in June last year because
of ''unremitting, extensive, sensational, inaccurate and
misleading'' reporting and non-disclosure of material
evidence.
They asked the Attorney General to consider whether to
charge the editors of the newspapers - which include the
Sun, Daily Mirror, Star and Daily Express - with contempt.
An application for judicial review, to be argued by Geoffrey
Robertson QC, follows a decision by the Solicitor General,
Sir Derek Spencer, in April this year - but withheld from
the two women - not to prosecute the newspapers.
The case was scheduled for 30 September but the hearing
date was vacated after the sisters' solicitor, Mark Stephens
of Stephens Innocent, was warned on 19 September legal
aid would be discontinued. The move came in the wake of
controversy over the reporting of the Rachel Nickell murder
trial, in which Colin Stagg was cleared on 14 September.
Aid was eventually restored, subject to a pounds 12,500
limit, after Mr Stephens alleged that the legal aid authorities
had been subjected to outside pressure. Tomorrow, the
two women will ask Mr Justice Sedley to order Sir Nicholas
to reveal the reasons for the original decision and to
reconsider it.
If they succeed, it could lead to one of the biggest contempt
of court challenges against the press since theprosecution
of five newspapers over reports of Michael Fagan's break-in
to Buckingham Palace. At the time of the Taylors' trial,
Kelvin MacKenzie, then editor of the Sun, said the judges
had overlooked the fact that this was a ' 'sensational''
case.
The judges said the press did not seem to appreciate that
the issue at trial was whether the women had killed the
deceased. Most of the reporting, they said, was not reporting
at all but comment which assumed guilt; it was quite impossible
to say that the jury had not been influenced by what they
read.
The sisters have offered to bring contempt proceedings
in their own names if the Attorney General does not wish
to do so himself. They want to seek compensation for loss
of liberty and financial loss from any newspaper found
guilty of contempt. |
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