Law experts query judge ousting media
A judge’s ejection of media from court in a high-profile bar drugging case has been labelled unusual and odd by law experts.
A journalist from The Press ,as well as two reporters from other media outlets, were present in the Christchurch District Court yesterday morning when the case was called.
The court proceeding was part of the prosecution against four men who were charged after women came forward to police in 2018, claiming their drinks were spiked at Mama Hooch bar in Christchurch. Some allege sexual assaults followed at other locations.
The defendants, all of whom have name suppression, were not present in court in front of Judge Jane Farish yesterday.
Before the proceedings began, Judge Farish questioned why the reporters were there, said they were not allowed to report on the matter and then asked them to leave the courtroom.
Professor Ursula Cheer, dean at University of Canterbury’s School of Law, described the incident as very unusual. ‘‘The general principle of open justice means that the public can attend and media can report [on court proceedings],’’ she said.
Cheer said it often happened that reporters attended court proceedings, but were unable to report much of what happened due to restrictions such as suppression orders.
‘‘The fact that they might not be able to report something does not impact on their general right to be there,’’ she said.
Under the Criminal Procedure Act, media could only be excluded from court proceedings when the security or defence of New Zealand was involved, Cheer said.
‘‘For trials of sexual offending, the public must be cleared when evidence is given by complainants, but media can remain for those trials. There are automatic suppressions in place for such cases, but again, that does not mean the media cannot attend,’’ Cheer said.
Law expert and deputy pro vice-chancellor at Massey University, Professor Chris Gallavin, said he found it odd a judge would choose to exclude media from proceedings when there were options available such as closing the court to the public or suppressing the information discussed in court.
‘‘In the absence of an order closing the court and considering that [in this case] there was a suppression of reporting in place, I would expect the judge to give very clear reasons at the time or very soon after for ejecting media specifically from court,’’ he said.
‘‘If reasons are not given it is highly likely that people will jump to the conclusion that this is an unjustified fetter on the freedom of the press.’’
In response to a written request from The Press on the reasons why the media had been excluded from the court proceedings, Judge Farish responded: ‘‘This was not a pretrial hearing but a directions conference. The information requested by the media was the next event date – 27th of July – which is the pretrial argument date and then I asked the media to leave.’’
The Press has laid a complaint with the Chief District Court Judge.