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Suppression orders

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Upcoming seminar on the Internet and suppression issues

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

The Law Commission, InternetNZ and the Ministry of Justice are hosting a seminar on the Internet and the courts. It will be looking at issues such as: • Undermining of suppression orders • Lack of jurisdiction over material hosted outside NZ • Online discussion of crimes and trials potentially being a contempt of court • […]

Sure enough…

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

The Solicitor-General has applied for Vince Siemer to be held in contempt of court for breaching the court order that he remove from his website his article about a suppressed HC judgment. (This time, he has sensibly just gone for a three-month jail term, seeking to avoid the Bill of Rights right-to-jury issues that continue […]

Siemer in contempt again?

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

Yet another chapter is written in the Vince Siemer saga. In this episode, Vince decides that a High Court order suppressing publication of a decision doesn’t apply to him. The decision concerned some pre-trial rulings in concerning the Uruwera defendants, so it’s pretty big deal. Justice Winkelmann suppressed the decision, it seems, out of concern […]

Carter-Rucked

Monday, October 19th, 2009

Heavy-hitting UK libel law firm Carter-Ruck has been getting some bad press lately. The Guardian reported that Carter-Ruck (famously referred to as “Carter-Fuck” by its nemesis Private Eye) had gagged it from reporting Parliamentary proceedings. What’s more, the gagged material related to a report concerning a toxic waste spill by giant oil company Trafigura. And […]

Breathless reporting?

Thursday, June 11th, 2009

I was prepared to be outraged this morning. What the hell? I thought. The Supreme Court overruled the High Court and the Court of Appeal and prevented telephone confession evidence from David Bain going to the jury? What were they thinking? I’ve now read the judgment (note the bizarre url on Stuff’s website’s link to the judgment: […]

Oops?

Sunday, June 7th, 2009

Did this Saturday’s NZ Herald, in publishing the information suppressed in the Bain trial, overlook the fact that the Supreme Court had recalled its judgment last month to make it clear that the publication restriction continued until further order of the court? The story doesn’t seem to be on the Herald’s website any more. The recall was […]

Bain call

Wednesday, March 25th, 2009

Can’t say I understand why Justice Pankhurst refused to allow the media to broadcast David Bain’s telephone call from the day of all the killings. We could hear reporters describing what he said. The jurors can’t be prejudiced by a repetition of evidence they’ve already heard. I can accept that there are problems allowing live streaming […]

Law Commission looks at suppression laws

Thursday, February 19th, 2009

The Law Commmission has put out an issues paper on suppressing names and evidence. They’re seeking input, but you’d better be quick. The paper sets out the various ways names and evidence can be suppressed, and asks whether reform is needed. In general, they’re looking at recommending that the grounds on which suppression can be granted […]

Nice job 1

Thursday, October 2nd, 2008

Kudos to: Judge David Harvey for reversing course on the suppression order that applied only to the internet. As I’ve discussed, he had reasons for imposing the unusual order, though I thought they weren’t sufficient. When the media belatedly turned up to argue the toss, the judge accepted that: absent an identifiable risk to a […]

Judge Harvey lifts internet suppression order

Friday, September 19th, 2008

It seems the media’s submissions on Friday were successful. Haven’t seen the decision yet.

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