Justice Matters

A media storm followed the conviction of Levi Bellfield for the murder of Milly Dowler. Ali Naseem Bajwa QC examines the fallout from the case

The medieval practice of determining guilt or innocence by subjecting the accused to trial by ordeal has happily long since passed. However, following the conviction of Levi Bellfield for the murder of Milly Dowler, the victim’s family described their experience of the trial as an ordeal and said that they had paid “too high a price” for the conviction. In the ensuing media and, inevitable, political storm the Criminal Justice System came in for intense criticism, much of it centred on a claim that the trial process is balanced unfairly in favour of the rights of the accused over the rights of victims of crime and witnesses. 

Recent events surrounding News International and the phone hacking  scandal raise questions about the future of the Press Complaints Commission. Desmond Browne QC investigates

Never can the press have shown so much interest in its own affairs as when examining where responsibility lies for the phone-hacking which took place at the now-defunct News of the World. Not only has this inevitably raised questions about corporate governance at News International, it has also led to the reading of the obsequies over the Press Complaints Commission (“PCC”). Typical was the contribution from the former Lord Chancellor, Jack Straw MP, in his Gareth Williams Memorial Lecture in July: “The PCC’s failure, not least in the face of the hacking scandal, has been abject. Its obituaries have now been pronounced, from across the political spectrum. All we await is the last rites”. 

Following details of his private life being splashed across the newspapers, Max Mosley brought a successful privacy action against News Group Newspapers Ltd in 2008.

He then complained to the European Court of Human Rights about the lack of any legal requirement in the UK for the press to notify an individual before publishing details about his or her private life. Here he explains why 

In the light of the News of the World phone hacking saga Sarah Lewis and Yousif Elagab examine the difficult legal issues now surrounding voicemail hacking and breaches of privacy

The demise of the News of the World has blown the phone hacking saga wide open.  The seemingly endless revelations of investigative techniques, without conscience or legitimate purpose, have embroiled not only the media and celebrities but the police, the CPS and Parliament, in particular the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee. 

Super-injunctions: now we know what they are, where do we go from here?

On 24 February last year the Commons Committee on Culture, Media and Sport published their report on Press Standards, expressing concern at the confusion which had become apparent the previous autumn over what protection was afforded to reports of Parliamentary proceedings, when there had been disclosure of information otherwise protected by an injunction. 

The coroner’s inquest into the London Bombings of 7 July 2005 is over. Max Hill QC,who represented the Metropolitan Police throughout, gives a firsthand account

“We are here today to resume the inquests into the deaths of the 52 innocent people who were killed as a result of the bombs in London on 7 July 2005. I should like to take a moment to remember them individually. Mr Keith will read out each of their names and then I shall ask all of us who can stand to do so for a minute’s silence in their memory.” 

Is the world of legal expert witnesses becoming deserted?  Has Jones v Kaney [2011] UKSC 13, in which the Supreme Court abolished their immunity from actions for breach of duty, made matters worse? Penny Cooper examines the case…  

In the second part of his article on the attempt by Abu Hamza to avoid extradition, Paul Hynes QC considers the arguments in the European Court and their compatibility with European notions of cruel and inhuman treatment

As we saw in the first part of this article, four men, Babar Ahmad, Haroon Rashid Aswat, Syed Tahla Ahsan and Abu Hamza, exhausted their UK domestic challenges to US extradition, and had to look to Europe for a remedy. 

Gray’s Inn was the setting for a stirring debate on libel reform in January. The timing was perfect. The Coalition Government was due to publish its draft Defamation Bill and Nick Clegg, only days before the debate, set out the Government’s commitment to libel reform, saying: “Our aim is to turn English Libel laws from an international laughing stock to an international blueprint”.

Chaired by Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, the five panellists covered a wide range of issues including: access to justice; the impact of libel reform on UK tabloids; how should libel law draw a distinction between the defamation claims against a blogger with a dozen readers and the defamation claims against a newspaper with millions of readers? 

To defend the Human Rights Act 1998 it is necessary to counter the falsehoods and distortions of those who misrepresent it. Regrettably the Prime Minister himself is among those who have done so, as well as more predictable elements of the media, particularly the Daily Mail.

A recent event that has unleashed misdirected criticism against the Act is the upholding by immigration judges of an appeal against deportation by an Iraqi asylum seeker who seven years previously had killed a child while driving a car.