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- Sisters win first step in 'trial by tabloid' battle
By Terence Shaw Legal Correspondent
The Daily Telegraph
TWO sisters whose murder convictions were quashed by the Court
of Appeal last year were granted leave yesterday to challenge
a decision by the Solicitor General not to bring contempt proceeding
against newspapers that prejudiced their trial.
Sensational and inaccurate press coverage of "their Old Bailey
trial was one of two grounds on which the Court of Appeal allowed
appeals by Michelle and Lisa Taylor against their convictions
for murdering Alison Shaughnessy, a bank clerk, in 1991.
The papers in the case were referred to the Attorney General by
the Court of Appeal but in June this year the Solicitor General,
Sir Derek Spencer, QC, announced that it was not regarded as an
"appropriate case" to bring contempt proceedings against
the newspapers, which included the Sun, the Daily Mirror, the
Star and the Daily Express.
After a two-hour hearing in the High Court yesterday, Mr Justice
Schiemann granted the sisters leave to bring judicial review proceedings
challenging the legality of the Solicitor General's decision.
In applying for leave to bring the challenge, Mr Geoffrey Robertson,
QC, appearing for the Taylors, told the judge that it was "the
first occasion in British history when a court has actually held
that defendants were denied the right to a fair trial by reason
of prejudicial press publicity".
Michelle, 24, and Lisa, 21, had served 11 months in prison "as
the result of a trial prejudiced by unlawful newspaper coverage",
he said. Mr Robertson said that if no action was taken by the
Attorney General, the same thing might happen again and others
might suffer as the Taylors had suffered.
If the press were given an inch "they will take a mile"
In sensational cases prejudicial material which was inadmissible
in court would be published, as it had been in this case, and
"the danger of trial by newspaper will become a reality".
In allowing the appeals against conviction, the Court of Appeal
had said the prejudice was so grave that a retrial could not take
place.
Mr Robertson claimed the Solicitor General had taken an erroneous
view of the law by concluding that contempt proceedings were unlikely
to succeed in relation to individual newspaper reports. That approach
would drive a "coach and horses" through the law and
was something the courts should correct, he said.
Although the Attorney General was answerable to Parliament, it
would be "idle to think" that if he were wrongly interpreting
the law of contempt, this would be corrected by Parliament.
The proper place to deal with the issue whether he was right in
his "item by item approach to the law of contempt" was
the courts. The sisters were not seeking a court'order directing
him to bring contempt proceedings against the newspapers but an
order quashing his decision as wrong in law and requiring him
to reconsider the case.
Allowing 'the challenge, the judge rejected argument that because
the Attorney General was the "guardian of the public interest",
his decisions could not be reviewed by the High Court. Lisa Taylor
said after the ruling that she was "a bit shocked" but
"really pleased" with the decision.
Mr Mark Stephens, solicitor for the Taylors, claimed the Attorney
General, Sir Nicholas Lyell, QC, had been involved "in a
classic case of legal arrogance". He had "ignored the
law"and "turned a blind eye, like Nelson, and allowed
a fleet of headlines to sail past him without doing anything about
it. It is time he did".
Last year in quashing the convictions of the Taylor sisters, the
Court of Appeal ruled that in addition to the "sensational
and inaccurate" press coverage which had prejudiced their
chances of a fair trial, the failure by the police to disclose
important evidence had created a "material irregularity"
in their trial. |
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