HM Attorney-General v MGN Ltd and Another
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | The Lord Chief Justice of England And Wales |
| Judgment Date | 29 July 2011 |
| Neutral Citation | [2011] EWHC 2074 (Admin) |
| Docket Number | Case No: CO/3685/2011 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division (Administrative Court) |
| Date | 29 July 2011 |
[2011] EWHC 2074 (Admin)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
DIVISIONAL COURT
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
The Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales
Lord Justice Thomas
and
Mr Justice Owen
Case No: CO/3685/2011
Mr Dominic Grieve QC, Her Majesty's Attorney-General and Miss Melanie Cumberland (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) for the Claimant
Mr Jonathan Caplan QC (Instructed by Reynolds Porter Chamberlain LLP) for the First Defendant
Miss Adrienne Page QC and Mr Anthony Hudson (Instructed by Farrer & Co) for the Second Defendant
Hearing date: 5 th July 2011
In these proceedings Her Majesty's Attorney-General contends that the first defendant, the publisher of the Daily Mirror newspaper, and the second defendant, the publisher of The Sun newspaper, should be committed, or otherwise dealt with for contempt of court. The contempt is said to arise from articles published in the issues of the Daily Mirror dated 31 st December 2010 and 1 st January 2011 and in the Sun on 1 st January 2011 in breach of the strict liability rule as defined in the Contempt of Court Act 1981 (the Act).
The Context
The proceedings arise from the killing of a young woman, Joanna Yeates, in Bristol on 17th December 2010. Her landlord, Christopher Jefferies, was arrested on 30 th December on suspicion of her murder. He was released from custody on unconditional police bail during the evening of 1 st January 2011. On 22 nd January another man, Vincent Tabak was charged with the murder of Miss Yeates. On 4 th March Mr Jefferies was informed that he was released from police bail. On 5 th May Tabak admitted that he was responsible for killing Miss Yeates when, at the Central Criminal Court, he pleaded guilty to her manslaughter. He denied murder on the basis of diminished responsibility. The trial of that issue will take place in the autumn.
There is therefore no doubt about the identity of the man who killed Miss Yeates or that Mr Jefferies is innocent of any involvement in it. By way of emphasis, he is not simply presumed in law to be innocent of the killing. As a matter of fact and reality he is innocent. He is not facing trial, and he will never face trial. However at the time when the articles complained of were published, he was under arrest. For the purposes of the Act proceedings against him were active. No one was to know that before very long he would be entirely exonerated. That feature makes this an unusual case. The articles complained of did not have and could not have had any impact whatever on a trial of Mr Jefferies, just because – as we now know — there will never be one. From the point of view of the defendants that was purely adventitious, and as we shall see, it is irrelevant to our decision. It is also irrelevant that the way in which some elements of the media may have treated Mr Jefferies may justify a substantial award of damages for defamation. This is a prosecution for contempt of court, not an analysis of any possible civil claim by him for compensation.
The Articles
The disappearance and tragic death of Miss Yeates during the Christmas period last year unsurprisingly commanded huge public interest and concern. She was reported missing on 19th December 2010. Her body was discovered on 25th December. On 28th December it was announced by the team investigating the case that she had been strangled. The public interest in the criminal investigation was very high and the developing story occupied a great deal of media attention, much of it focussed on Mr Jefferies, who was Miss Yeates's landlord and who lived in the same building. As we have noted, on 30 December Mr Jefferies was arrested on suspicion of her murder.
The articles complained of
Daily Mirror – 31 December 2010
On the front page of the Daily Mirror, in the context of what were described as the "Jo files" the headline alleged that "Jo suspect is peeping Tom". It was asserted on the front page in large print:
"Arrest landlord spied on flat couple", followed immediately below by:
"Friend in jail for paedophile crimes", followed immediately below by:
"Cops now probe 36 – years old murder."
In short, while positively asserting that Mr Jefferies was a voyeur, without directly asserting that he was involved in paedophile crimes or a long unresolved murder, the impression conveyed to an objective reader was that he was somehow linked with not one but two awful, additional crimes.
For the "full story" attention was directed to pages 4 and 5. The main coverage on page 4 was directed at an allegation that the plea of a young couple "to protect their privacy was apparently refused by the eccentric landlord". The implication was that Mr Jefferies was a peeping Tom. At the bottom of the page under the headline "Fellow teacher abused boys in flat" it was asserted that a "paedophile colleague of murder suspect Chris Jefferies abused a young boy at the flat where Jo lived". There was then a reference to the trial and sentence of a man called Stephen Johnston, with an account of how in the early 90s he had abused a pupil in the apartment from which Miss Yeates had disappeared. Johnston was linked with Mr Jefferies, first, by an account of how he bought the flat when the "paedophile moved" out, and second by a reference to the fact that they were teachers at the same school at the time when Johnston's offences were committed. The fairly lengthy text does include "…although there is no suggestion Jefferies was involved". On page five the headline in large font reads "We caught him looking in the windows many times… he was strange, always hanging about". At the bottom of the same page the headline reads "1974 strangler never caught" and the murder of Miss Yeates is said to bear "haunting similarities to the unsolved killing of a student teacher nearby in 1974". It records that "last night police refused to rule out a link between the two killings".
Then, on page 6 and 7 the bold headline reads "the nutty professor", with a reference under an exclusive banner to "bizarre past of Joanna Yeates murder suspect", followed immediately by: "Posh ex-teacher who was "arrogant and rude."" The main drive of this page is to underline why it was that Mr Jefferies had earned the reputation as "the local oddball".
The Sun, 1 st January 2011
On the lower half of the front page of The Sun the headline reads "Obsessed by death" and it is alleged that Mr Jefferies "scared kids" by a macabre fascination. He wanted to show death to his pupils and was obsessed with it. That story was developed on page 5 which referred to his academic obsession with death and his particular fascination with the Victorian murder novel. Page 4 contains a report that a couple who had formerly rented a flat from Mr Jefferies believed that he had let himself into their home while they were out. He could let himself in when he wanted as he had a key. More significant, was the headline across pages 4 and 5 "Murdered Jo: suspect "followed me" says woman". And this was followed by a lengthy article under the headline "What do you think I am…a pervert?" describing the "landlord's outburst at blonde". This was an "exclusive" story about a "former acquaintance" of Mr Jefferies who felt that she was being followed by him. The thrust of the story was that Mr Jefferies liked blondes – and Miss Yeates, too, was blonde — and she felt as though she was being followed by someone described as "quite a dominant personality", a "control freak" who made her feel "very uncomfortable". He tried to question her about her personal life and made inappropriate remarks. There was then a report of speculation among neighbours that Mr Jefferies was gay, although the blonde woman believed that he was "bi-sexual". The article ends by referring to her "weeping" as she commented, "I tried to say one day that I didn't think his behaviour was normal, but he got angry and said, "what do you think I am, some kind of pervert?". That made her "nervous". Another couple living in the building were said to have described Mr Jefferies as "Hannibal Lecter" but that was said to be a "jokey moniker" given because they found Mr Jefferies to be "posh and a little creepy, but nothing more sinister than that".
Daily Mirror, 1 January 2001
The front page banner headline asks "Was killer waiting in Jo's flat?". The story on the front page begins:
"Joanna Yeates's killer may have been waiting for her inside her basement flat as she returned home. Detectives yesterday sent towels and bedding for DNA tests after finding no signs of a break-in".
We observe that if entry was not forced, then whoever went into the flat had access to it. The only person with such access referred to in any of the articles in the Daily Mirror was the landlord.
On pages 4 and 5 the earlier Clifton murder is given considerable coverage. The account on page 4 is that "Miss Yeates may have been killed after finding an intruder in her flat who did not want to be identified later". On page 5, in the Jo Files format, side by side, there are photographs of Joanna Yeates "murdered in Clifton in 2010" and Glenys Carruthers, "murdered in Clifton in 1974", together with a map which "shows how near Miss Yeates's flat is to the street where murdered Glenys Carruthers went missing in Clifton in 1974". On the map itself four specific points are identified, the place where the body of Glenys Carruthers was found; Clifton College, where Mr Jefferies worked; the place where Glenys Carruthers went missing; and the address where Miss Yeates and Mr Jefferies lived.
The submission on behalf of the Attorney-General in relation to the articles in the Daily Mirror is that...
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