The Irish Independentand the Sunday Worldhave been found in contempt of court over articles they published about a rape case.
The articles, published after a man was convicted of raping his four daughters but prior to his being sentenced were "highly prejudicial" to the accused, interfered with the administration of justice and were a contempt of court, the High Court found today.
Ms Justice Elizabeth Dunne adjourned the proceedings to next Thursday when she will hear submissions as to the appropriate penalty to be imposed for the contempt.
The Director of Public Prosecutions brought the contempt proceedings against Independent Newspapers (Ireland) Ltd, Sunday Newspapers Ltd and a number of journalists over articles in the Irish Independenton April 29th, 2003 and in the Sunday Worldon May 3rd, 2003.
The articles related to a case in which a man had pleaded guilty in the Central Criminal Court on April 28th, 2003 to 12 sample counts in an indictment which contained a total of 153 counts of offences against his four daughters.
He was sentenced on June 20th, 2003 to ten life sentences for rape and to lesser sentences for sexual assault, with all the sentences to run concurrently. The Court of Criminal Appeal later upheld the sentences.
Giving her reserved judgment today, the judge said that, in some cases, material published prior to sentence may be of little significance and would therefore not constitute a real or serious risk. However, in this case, she had concluded the articles were a contempt of court in that they were highly prejudicial to the accused thus interfering in the administration of justice.
She was satisfied, had the articles been published after the conclusion of the sentencing hearing, no issue could be taken with their contents. However, the trial judge had stated as a fact that he had been prejudiced by publication of the offending articles, she noted.
Although she did not think that alone was determinative of the issue, it seemed to her that the articles contained highly prejudicial material. It was not unusual following a serious criminal trial for there to be extensive media coverage in relation to that trial, she said.
It was fair to say, she added, that the media performed a valuable and useful service in informing the public as a whole as to the nature of such offences and the day to day business of the courts.
Further, following a sentencing hearing on pleas of guilty in a notorious case such as was involved here, there was a tendency to have widespread coverage detailing not just the matters outlined in the court proceedings but also much background material which would not have been before a criminal court when it was sentencing an accused.
Material could be provided to journalists by garda sources, victims, their families and more unusually, perhaps, the accused themselves. This was something that occurred not just in cases involving the type of offences that occurred here but in many other cases involving serious crime.
However, what was unusual in this case was that such detailed coverage in the respondents' newspapers had appeared before the sentence hearing. No evidence had been heard at the point in time when the articles complained of were published.
The Irish Independentarticle had referred to a number of specific matters about which the DPP complained. It referred to the accused's "deadly cunning", the arrangements he made to avoid the serious charges involved by fleeing the country and going to a country he had boasted was safe and in which he could not be touched by Irish law as no extradition treaty exsited between it and Ireland; and to a physical confrontation alleged to have occurred between the accused and the police in that country.
Ms Justice Dunne said it was possible those matters could have been ventilated before the trial judge at the sentencing hearing. However, when the articles were published, they were not then, or subsequently, put before the sentencing judge in evidence.
The matters complained of were reiterated in the Sunday Worldarticle which questioned the accused's remorse for the offences to which he had pleaded guilty. The question of remorse was one which might be expected to be aired in mitigation on behalf of the accused at the sentencing hearing, she noted.
Sunday Newspapers, (publishers of the Sunday World), sought to justify the publication of matters relating to the accused's departure abroad and the manner in which he was apprehended there on the basis these had already been ventilated in the Irish Independent article.
The judge said she could not see how that would justify the publication if the earlier article amounted to contempt.