Contempt of Court
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Wednesday, October 29th, 2008Here’s an op-ed piece I wrote for the DomPost. Full credit to the boys (rugby was the winner on the day) for publishing it, because it’s not entirely flattering. Before that, they commissioned an independent and thoughtful piece from Karl du Fresne. The paper’s trial coverage was also fair and balanced. Credit to Tim Pankhurst […]
Blow me down
Friday, October 10th, 2008I confess, I thought Fairfax and Tim Pankhurst were goners. But they have survived the contempt application for their “Terrorism Files” story mostly unscathed. I say “mostly” because the judges found that they should have been prosecuted for breaching suppression orders and the Crimes Act provision outlawing disclosure of intercepted communications. “We are at a loss to […]
A different way to tackle the juror-internet problem
Tuesday, October 7th, 2008Fine the jurors. Under new laws in Victoria, jurors can now be fined up to A$13,000 for conducting online research during a trial.
TV3 next in the dock…?
Tuesday, October 7th, 2008It’s an innocuous-sounding phrase, but it should be emblazoned on the memory of every court reporter: “identity is at issue”. That means that the defence will be arguing that “it wasn’t me, it was someone else”. (This can be contrasted with a defence such as, “it was me, but it wasn’t a crime, or it […]
Nice Job 2
Thursday, October 2nd, 2008Joanne Black’s article “Fair Facts?” in this week’s Listener (full text up on the 18th) gives a terrific overview of the key issues in the Fairfax contempt trial, based largely on the affidavits of the experts. While I’m dishing out praise, let’s have a round of applause for the headline writer, too.
Public meeting on Urerewa raids
Monday, September 22nd, 2008I’m speaking at a public meeting tonight on the contempt of court aspects of the Urewera raids. The meeting is organised by supporters of the defendants, and will also include a discussion of the broader issues around the raids, and the Search and Surveillance Powers Bill. I’m not a member of the October 15th solidarity […]
Fairfax contempt case: some impressions
Friday, September 19th, 2008I caught some parts of the evidence, but not the submissions, so I’m a bit limited in what I can add to my original thoughts here. But that’s also the case with the media coverage generally. While the press bench was full to overflowing, the journalists might just as well have been reporting on a […]
Just wondering…
Thursday, September 4th, 2008Did Judge Perkins consider the NZ Bill of Rights Act before issuing a blanket suppression order in the Arms Act charges relating to the police raids last year? These sorts of discretions must be exercised consistently with the BORA – so the restrictions should be demonstrably justified in terms of the tests laid down by the […]
How to shut down speech on the internet. Maybe.
Thursday, September 4th, 2008Sebastian Hoegl, a masters student from Germany in my media law seminar, made a startling suggestion this week. Since we all access the internet via an ISP (we put in a web address, the ISP hives off, collects the data, and sends it to our computers), then the ISPs are publishing that material to us. […]
Where’s the media?
Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008According to this report, Judge Harvey seems bemused that the media haven’t turned up to make submissions about his order allowing only non-online reporting of details about the Hapata case. “Not even an RSVP?” he’s reported to have asked.
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