Criminal

Reporting - order preventing reporting during separate trial of other defendants - proper approachR v Sherwood: CA (Longmore LJ, Douglas Brown and Eady JJ):3 May 2001The Daily Telegraph Group plc and other media groups appealed under section 159 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 against an order under section 4(2) of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 made by Mr Justice Rafferty sitting at the Central Criminal Court.The order prohibited the reporting of proceedings during the trial of the defendant police officer for murder, such order to be lifted only after trial of three other police officers, whose trial had already been severed.

The appeal was dismissed after the hearing on 11 April 2001, reserved reasons being delivered on 3 May 2001.

Reporting restrictions were lifted when the second trial came to an end on 22 May 2001.Michael Tugendhat QC (instructed by Bindman & Partners) for the appellants.

Nigel Sweeney QC (instructed by CPS, Ludgate Hill) for the Crown.

Michael Wood QC (instructed by Russell Jones & Walker) for the defendant Sherwood.

Julian Bevan QC (instructed by Rowe & Cohen) for the defendant Burton.

Stephen Batten QC and Patrick Gibbs (instructed by Venters Reynolds) for the defendant French.

Jonathan Goldberg QC and John Beggs (instructed by Goodall Barnett James, Brighton) for the defendant Siggs.Held, dismissing the appeal, that such orders operated at the interface between two vital public interests enshrined within articles 6 and 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights; that first, the court would ask whether reporting would give rise to a 'not insubstantial' risk of prejudice to the administration of justice in the relevant proceedings; that if such a risk was perceived to exist, the question was whether a section 4(2) order would eliminate it; that even if the judge was satisfied that an order would achieve the objective, he would still have to consider whether the risk could satisfactorily be overcome by some less restrictive means; that if the judge concluded that there was no other way of eliminating the perceived risk of prejudice, it might still be necessary to ask whether the degree of risk contemplated should be regarded as tolerable in the sense of being the lesser of two evils; and that, accordingly, since the judge had adopted that approach, no error had been shown.

(WLR)