Dagga trial delay over livestreaming bid

THE trial to legalise dagga‚ seven years in the making‚ has been postponed until today because the state and defendants Doctors for Life do not want the case livestreamed.

The “dagga couple”, Jules Stobbs and Myrtle Clarke, are taking seven government departments to court in a bid to legalise dagga.

The eighth defendant in the case is Doctors for Life‚ a Christian doctors’ group who applied to be part of the case.

The constitutional hearing will be heard in the Pretoria High Court for a month.

Clarke and Stobbs asked two months ago to have the case livestreamed and made freely available to any media house as well as broadcast on their website Fields of Green For All.

Should the pair lose this case to legalise dagga‚ they will face criminal charges for possession of dagga after being arrested in their house in 2010 where they were growing large amounts of the drug.

Permission to livestream the case was granted on Friday with strict conditions.

But the state and Doctors for Life have opposed this.

Doctors for Life spokesman Johann Claassen said the objection was because the people applying to broadcast the case were plaintiffs in the case and not neutral as a media house would be.

He said the state did not want a precedent set allowing any plaintiff to broadcast their own trial and even make money off the material.

They feared this could set a precedent in which an alleged murderer could livestream his trial and gain public support.

Doctors for Life lawyer Helene Davidtsz said: “Doctors for Life are concerned less about the livestream‚ but [are worried] about the use of material after the fact”.

Stobbs admits that a publicly available feed would allow anyone to take clips of the case and use them out context.

But he says people who support the legalisation of dagga or those opposed could equally misuse the material. – TimesLIVE