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Saturday, October 11, 2008

Media wins contempt case against solicitor general


The Solicitor- General, David Collins took the media to court and lost today. The case surrounded the publishing of transcripts of conversations police secretly recorded in an investigation into military-style training camps in the Ureweras, more particularly whether the 19 people facing charges would have a fair trial given the publication of the conversations.

The Judges decided that despite the publications, the accused would get a fair trial and so therefore the publication was not in contempt. Breaching suppression orders and being in contempt are two entirely different matters, and I supported the Dominion Post all the way and I'm very pleased it and Fairfax won. I read the whole document that appeared on line regarding this case - it was only online for a day but i downloaded it - and a lot more could have been said.

Finally, didn't some of the information that was published concern matters that the police didn't even prosecute over?

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Scoopit!

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Finally, didn't some of the information that was published concern matters that the police didn't even prosecute over?"

Yes - that was the problem. The jury pool was going to hear all this completely irrelevent information about charges that weren't even laid, which they might hold against the defendants on unrelated charges.

(like how Schollum's et. al. previous convictions weren't allowed to be heard by the jury, because they would have made the jury more likely to convict even though its irrelevent to whether they offended again)

October 10, 2008 at 5:30 PM  
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October 10, 2008 at 8:20 PM  

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