CONTEMPT OF COURT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 July 1938, Page 8

CONTEMPT OF COURT

ALLEGED BY COUNSEL. REPORTING OF WELLINGTON HEARING. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. In the Magistrate’s Court today Mr H. F. O’Leary, K.C., drew attention to what he submitted was a case of gross contempt of court committed by a local evening paper in its report of yesterday’s proceedings. Mr O’Leary said: “It is elementary in our administration of justice that prior to a trial nothing should be said, or rather that nothing should be reported, in the way of comment which may mean that an accused would not have a fair trial. Four years ago, in the Supreme Court at Wellington, a' local paper, or the publisher of a local paper, was fined £lOO for publishing prior to a trial a photograph of a person charged with murder. That case is reported as the Attorney-General versus Tonks.” Mr O’Leary quoted the following extract from a judgment of Mr Justice Blair: “A person accused of a crime is entitled to have the charge against him heard and adjudicated upon by a jury of his fellows, and he is entitled also to have the case presented to such jury with their minds open and unprejudiced and untrammelled by anything which any newspaper, for the benefit of its readers (which is of course for the benefit of the newspaper itself), takes upon itself to publish before any part of the case has been heard. When a charge against an accused person is that of murder, public interest is always aroused and the gravity of the charge imposes upon a newspaper a special duty of care in the selection of the matter it takes upon itself to publish. Excess of zeal may be fraught with the gravest consequences, either to the accused person himself or to the administration of justice. It would be lamentable indeed if there were allowed to creep into the conduct of newspapers in New Zealand the practice before a trial of publishing any matter which even remotely could be construed as comment on the case still to be heard.” “When I looked at the report in the ‘Evening Post’ last night,” Mr O’Leary proceeded, “candidly I was shocked at the captions.” Mr O’Leary read the captions to the Court, emphasising the last heading, “Accused’s written admission.” Of what? Mr O’Leary asked. Of guilt, or of murder. Counsel said he did not know how far the damage of a headline of that kind might go when one realised that the case eventually had to be tried by twelve men unknown at present from the general body of citizens who might read that headline and not go any further. That was not all, said Mr O’Leary. In the second column, where the paper set out that letter—that striking letter

—by a boy to his mother, the paper had not just merely published the particular letter as it was entitled to, but it had interpreted the letter. Mr O’Leary read the following paragraph which preceded the text of the letter as set out in yesterday's “Post.” “At this stage, Mr ' O’Leary read Douglas’s letter to his mother, a long and well-com;posed letter, in which the son said that, because of his treatment of the family, he had killed his father.” “Mr O’Leary said the letter said nothing of the kind. That was the paper’s interpretation of it. The question of interpretation was a matter for the jury which tried the boy. At once, said Mr O’Leary, he had endeavoured to have something done to prevent untold damage being done to the boy’s case, but it had gone out, not only in Wellington—the report not the captions —but also to every evening paper in New Zealand, which got news from the Press Association.