Stuff reports-
Australian newspapers have been ordered to remove old articles from their websites after a court ruled they might interfere with a fair trial. The decision, one of the first of its kind, came after lawyers for three accused men argued jurors might develop prejudice by reading any of 10 selected articles. The Supreme Court yesterday ordered the removal of these reports from the online sites of various newspapers for the duration of the trial over the death of the former drug dealer Terry Falconer, due to start next week.
What an outstanding example of judicial overkill. What ignorance. Do these judges and lawyers not know that there could be reporting or discussion all over the web concerning the cases? Really, the judiciary needs to get up to speed on the matter of the internet. We cannot have freedom of information and expression interfered with by these ignorant technological troglodytes. The finding is over the top and it is completely impractical.
The jurors have already been instructed not to look the cases up. What more can really be done? And how often will this idiocy occur in the future and how far will its tentacles extend?
Carolyn Davenport, SC, the barrister for one of the accused, had argued that a juror might inadvertently speak to someone who had read one of the articles online, and the court needed to protect them from ”events that put their integrity to the test”.
Justice Derek Price agreed and said the court had the obligation to do whatever it could to protect the integrity of the process. ”The confidence in the integrity of the jurors does not mean the court should not protect them from incidents that put their integrity to the test,” he said.
What absolute unmitigated garbage. The whole world’s access to information is to be curtailed because some silly judge and lawyer in Australia believes jurors “might” be influenced by “talking to someone who had seen the articles online”.
An IT expert, Nicholas Klein, had told the court material could be republished on other websites. The only way to make the stories unavailable for people searching for them, he said, would be ”to remove every single one from the internet”. Justice Price said the inability to remove all offending material did not mean the removal of the articles outlined would be futile.
Sorry Judge. The IT expert is correct and you should have listened to him. Futile is just what it is. Furthermore, its an intolerable attempt at imposing unrealistic and uncivilized boundaries on freedom of information that will merely bring the Australian judiciary into disrepute.
TrueblueNZ 
9 responses to “Australian Supreme Court Demands Websites Delete Past Articles”
It’s no wonder that people say “First shoot the lawyers.”
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Why not just go the whole hog and remove juries from the process? Afterall, that’s the ONLY real way “to protect the integrity of the process” – reading between the lines of what Justice Derek Price said.
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The “integrity of the process” relies on the commonsense and integrity of jurors, not on denying them access to information.
If they can be relied on to sort out the conflicting claims of the defence lawyers and the prosecution, then how come they’re deemed incapable of applying the same process to other sources of information?
This is simply another attack on the people by an unelected elitist prick who would prefer that the ignorant masses didn’t get in the way of administering justice– his particular brand of justice.
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You may want to have a look at the Criminal Procedure Bill that is currently before parliament here (submissions on it close tomorrow) for the NZ equivalent of this stuff, where ISP’s (and the new definition of them is so broad to catch just about everybody) can be prosecuted for not removing information. (Huge fines and jail time as possible punishment)
While doing that also look at the suppression order saga on the Urewera trial, where the high court judge decided that the trial could not be before a jury because the issues are “too complicated” and then tried to suppress that decision. (this suppression was successfully challenged).
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“You may want to have a look at the Criminal Procedure Bill ”
That would be that clod hopping socialist scumbag Power again right?
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The truth of the matter is that juries are regarded as little more than a bloody ornament and rubber stamp. Hell, most jurors aren’t aware that a) the courts belong to the people, not the government or the judiciary and b) they can choose not to convict regardless of how the judge directs them.
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KG: In fact there are schools of thought that suggest that juries even have the possibility to determine that the legislation under which someone is charged is invalid.
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Now, that would be a fun thing to see, Bez!
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the courts belong to the people, not the government or the judiciary and b) they can choose not to convict regardless of how the judge directs them.
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