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??/??/94 - Trying it on
WHEN Michelle and Lisa Taylor walked free from the High Court
one Friday morning in June last year, they left behind them
a life sentence which had been torn up by the appeal judges,
and a delicate problem which remained to be handled by the
Attorney General.
In releasing the Taylors from jail, Lord Justice McCowan had
used all the authority at his disposal to put Fleet Street
in the dock the sisters had just left. Tabloid reporting of
the trial a year earlier had been sensational, inaccurate
and misleading, he said.
"We find it quite impossible to say that the jury were
not influenced in their decision by what they read in the
press." And he wanted the Attorney General, Sir Nicholas
Lyell, to do something about it. Months passed. There was
no-word from Sir Nicholas. This was hardly surprising.
If he did agree to start proceedings for contempt of court,
it would be the biggest legal action against the press in
living memory, and it would be a direct attack on the Government's
closest friends in the media, the right-wing tabloids, whose
reporting it was that had so incensed the judges.
Clearly, he needed time to consider. More months passed and,
eventually, in May this year, the Taylor sisters' new lawyer,
Mark Stephens of Stephens Innocent, wrote to the Attorney
General to point out that nearly a year had now gone by and
perhaps he ought to make up his mind.
Two weeks later, Sir Nicholas wrote back to explain that he
had made up his mind in April, but he just hadn't mentioned
it to anyone. He had decided, he said, not to do anything.
Marir Stephens was curious.
If these newspapers were prosecuted for contempt, they would
come up before a High Court judge of precisely the same calibre
and background as Lord Justice McCowan, and since McCowan
had already made it perfectly clear that he believed that
the newspapers were at fault, Stephens wondered why the Attorney
General wouldn't act. So he wrote to ask him.
Sir Nicholas wrote back on June 24 to say that he would not
tell him. Stephens thought it looked rather like the Attorney
General had tried to bury the whole issue. The Taylor sisters
thought that the whole thing was pretty sick.
After all, if these newspapers had had their way, they would
have spent 15 or 20 years in prison for a crime they had not
committed. So they decided to fight. Next week, they go back
to the High Court, with Geoffrey Robertson QC at the helm,
for a judicial review to ask the judges to put the Attorney
General in his place and Fleet Street in the dock where, they
believe, it belongs.
It is a significant case. It carries with it the prospect
of three or four tabloid editors heading for Pentonville prison.
It raises a question about whether the tabloid press is now
so powerful that it is able simply to ignore the law while
the Government tries to look away.
And it points to an underlying argument about the quality
of justice which is perhaps not quite as simple as defence
lawyers sometimes suggest. For even if it is clear that the
existing law was shamelessly broken by the tabloids in the
Taylor case, it is possible that the law itself is wrong that
the press has relatively little effect on the way jurors behave.
And while the Attorney General has a clear duty to enforce
the law against everyone, including the Government's allies,
it may be that all newspapers could reasonably argue that
the law itself should be removed. The press were always going
to love the trial of the Taylor sisters.
There was violence: they were accused of taking a knife to
Alison Shaughnessy and stabbing her 54 times in the hallway
of her flat in Battersea, south London. And there was sex:
the motive was supposed to be jealousy; Michelle had once
gone out with the dead woman's husband, John Shaughnessy,
and, according to the police, had decided to kill to retrieve
her man.
Lisa had gone along to help her, they said. When the trial
opened at the Old Bailey in July 1992, the reporting took
off. But, as Lord Justice McCowan eventually recorded: "What
in fact they did was not reporting at all. It was comment,
and comment which assumed guilt on the part of the girls in
the dock."
McCowan recalled how newspapers, including the Sun and the
Star, had published a still picture from a video in which
Michelle was seen kissing John Shaughnessy on the cheek controversial
enough since the trial was in progress and this video, portraying
a central relationship, had not been shown to the jury. But
the press went further.
As McCowan explained: "They froze a frame so that the
peck on the cheek was made to appear a mouth-to-mouth kiss."
He quoted the banner headlines over the picture, such as "Cheats
Kiss" and "Judas Kiss". All this broke the
first rule of court reporting: "Nothing like that had
been said in court."
There was much more headlines about love-crazy mistresses
and the butchered wives which had no basis in evidence; the
Daily Express was reporting "Killer wept as she stroked
her victim's hair", though that had never been said in
court; the Daily Sport reporting accurately that Michelle
had kept a diary, but adding thoroughly inaccurately that
it contained "her true feelings of suppressed jealousy
and hatred for her rival".
Michelle was constantly described as a jealous mistress even
though she said that she had ended her relationship with Shaughnessy
seven months before the killing and had subsequently had no
feelings for him at all.
The Sun ran another picture of Michelle, in the background
at the Shaughnessys' wedding, with the headline "The
'Killer' Mistress Who Was At Lover's Wedding", and an
arrow three inches long from the word "killer" to
Michelle's face.
During the trial, Michelle and Lisa Taylor were so amazed
at the reporting that they treated it as a joke. Mark Stephens,
who did not represent them at that stage, thinks it was much
more serious.
"They were tried by the media, who directly affected
the outcome of their trial, as was acknowledged by the Court
of Appeal. Juries cannot be expected to ignore that kind of
unremitting, collective pressure from the media."
The 1981 Contempt of Court Act debars the press from writing
anything which would create "a substantial risk of serious
prejudice". But Stephens and other defence lawyers say
the press is now routinely doing precisely that, aping American
newspapers, who rip the heart out of a big case long before
it reaches a jury.
Lawyers point to the case of Fred West in Cheltenham, whose
trial for murder is due next year. West's lawyers asked the
Attorney General to intervene to stop the media circus around
him, but as with the Taylor sisters, he refused.
They point, too, to the case of Colin Stagg, who was accused
of killing Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common and who was
subjected to a blitz of bad publicity before his prospective
trial judge became so alarmed at police tactics in the case
that he threw it out. No newspaper has been prosecuted for
its behaviour in that case either.
It is clear that the reporting of court cases has changed.
Whereas its purpose used to be to provide a summary of the
evidence of the day, the aim now is more often to find the
best line and embroider it into a story. In Michelle Taylor's
case, for example, the Crown found one entry in her diary
in which she made aggressive remarks about Alison Shaughnessy.
The defence pointed out that it was only one entry and that
it had been written seven months before the murder. An old-fashioned
court report would have given equal weight to both sides.
A contemporary tabloid report spots the narrative potential
in the Crown line, singles it out, and projects it as "a
diary of hate".
The trial is no longer the story; it is merely a reservoir
of potential stories. But if it is clear that the press is
now pushing the law to breaking point, and that the Attorney
General is open to criticism for failing to act, it remains
doubtful that the underlying issue is quite so simple. Are
juries really as vulnerable to the press as defence lawyers
suggest?
Though the press may have hurt the Taylors, it was the police
who did the real damage, as Lord Justice McCowan recorded
when he set the sisters free. He recalled how the police had
produced only one witness who could put the two sisters anywhere
near the scene of the crime.
Michael Unsworth-White, a doctor Who lived in the same road
as Alison Shaughnessy, had said he had seen two young women
with blond hair running away from the Shaughnessy's house
at the time the police believed the murder was committed.
It was only when one of the sisters barristers insisted on
ploughing through a cardboard box full of papers in Battersea
police station that they discovered that Unsworth White had
originally described one of these young women as "black"
and that he had also originally said they were walking not
running.
Lord Justice McCowan said that the officer in charge of the
inquiry knew this information, understood its significance
and yet had decided not to disclose it. At the original trial,
one of the sisters' barristers had been forced to apologise
after appearing to suggest that Dr Unsworth-White's evidence
might have been affected by the prospect of securing a reward.
It was only after the trial that the Taylors discovered Dr
Unsworth-White had applied for the reward and, as Lord Justice
McCowan noted, that the police knew this at the time of the
trial.
McCowan beat both press and police with his stick: "The
press is not more entitled to assume guilt in what it writes
than a police officer is entitled to convince himself that
defendant is guilty and to suppress evidence, the emergence
of which has fears might lead to a defendants acquittal."
THERE IS good evidence that juries are capable of insulating
themselves from the prejudice of news papers. John De Lorean
the Californian car maker, was filmed by the FBI discussing
a massive cocaine deal with undercover officers posing as
drug dealers.
When De Lorean was arrested, that film was broadcast around
the world. But when he came to trial, the jury acquitted him
on the basis of the evidence before them. But what no jury
can do is to acquit a defendant if the evidence of truth is
concealed. Newspapers need to be able to point the finger
at the corrupt policeman or the bent President or the untrustworthy
MP.
I they are wrong, they should be sued for libel. If they are
right, they should be free to carry on accusing. For defence
lawyers, blood-thirsty tabloid editors are an easy target
even easier if they are defended by their political friends
but the real enemy is injustice.
And in the case of the Taylor sisters as in the case of all
our classic miscarriages the real power to produce injustice
continues to lie in the hands of policemen. |
| Contact : bernard.omahoney@bernardomahoney.com |
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