More tools needed for open justice

When a case captures as much public attention as the murder of Grace Millane has done, it becomes virtually impossible for courts to suppress information about the accused person. Virtually but not entirely. Responsible mass media do their best to abide by the law while publishing as much information as they can. They are punished for this, potentially losing listeners, viewers and readers who are drawn to websites that can ignore the suppression order with impunity.

Thus a law designed for the purpose of fairness to an accused person, creates an unfairness to those who respect it. But worse, it provides a commercial advantage to those who publish rumour, scuttlebutt and subjective judgments of the accused without the checks and verifications that professional news-gathering involves.

The best policy in this situation, as in most, is to err on the side of openness. It is heartening that when the person accused of Grace Millane’s murder appeared in an Auckland court on Monday,

Judge Evangelos Thomas did not agree to the request for name suppression. But the lawyers for

The best policy, as in most, is to err on the side of

openness.

the accused had only to state an intention to appeal to a higher court for the accused’s identity to be suppressed for 20 working days.

The courts need to cut short that interval in cases of high public interest. A High Court judge should have heard that appeal the same day. Considering the impossibility of suppressing all information about an accused person in a case that has caught international attention, it is surely unlikely this suppression order will be upheld even if it remains in force for four weeks.

In fact, some of the material already circulating on social media will probably be used by lawyers for the accused to try to prevent a trial. They should not succeed. Judges who hear these pre-trial applications should have more confidence in their ability to help a jury put prejudicial knowledge to one side. Not all jurisdictions try to suppress pretrial information as strictly as New Zealand does and standards of justice do not appear to be lower in those countries. In fact it can be argued that verdicts might be more accurate if juries were sometimes given facts that may be prejudicial. It is often disturbing when a person is acquitted with a record of convictions for similar offences that was kept from the jury. Suppression is becoming increasingly difficult and the law should relax it.