Articles published in the Irish Independent and the Sunday World after a man was convicted of raping his four daughters, but prior to his being sentenced, were "highly prejudicial" to the accused, interfered with the administration of justice and were a contempt of court, the High Court found yesterday.
Ms Justice Elizabeth Dunne adjourned the proceedings to next Thursday when she will hear submissions as to the appropriate penalty to be imposed for the contempt.
The Director of Public Prosecutions brought the contempt proceedings against Independent Newspapers (Ireland) Ltd, Sunday Newspapers Ltd and a number of journalists over articles in the Irish Independent on April 29th, 2003, and in the Sunday World on May 3rd, 2003.
The articles related to a case in which a man had pleaded guilty in the Central Criminal Court on April 28th, 2003, to 12 sample counts in an indictment which contained a total of 153 counts of offences against his four daughters. He was sentenced on June 20th, 2003, to 10 life sentences for rape and to lesser sentences for sexual assault, with all the sentences to run concurrently. The Court of Criminal Appeal later upheld the sentences.
Giving her reserved judgment yesterday, the judge said that in some cases, material published prior to sentence may be of little significance and would therefore not constitute a real or serious risk.
However, in this case, she had concluded the articles were a contempt of court in that they were highly prejudicial to the accused, thus interfering in the administration of justice.
She was satisfied, had the articles been published after the conclusion of the sentencing hearing, no issue could be taken with their contents.
However, the trial judge had stated as a fact that he had been prejudiced by publication of the offending articles, she noted. Although she did not think that alone was determinative of the issue, it seemed to her that the articles contained highly prejudicial material.
It was not unusual following a serious criminal trial for there to be extensive media coverage in relation to that trial, she said.
Further, following a sentencing hearing on pleas of guilty in a notorious case such as was involved here, there was a tendency to have widespread coverage detailing not just the matters outlined in the court proceedings, but also much background material which would not have been before a criminal court when it was sentencing an accused.
However, what was unusual in this case was that such detailed coverage in the respondents' newspapers had appeared before the sentence hearing. No evidence had been heard at the point in time when the articles complained of were published.
The judge said counsel for Independent Newspapers had argued the jurisdiction being invoked by the DPP was one rarely invoked, rarely appropriate and rarely applied.
That rarity, she said, might be explained by the fact that it was rare for the newspapers to publish the type of material that was published in these newspapers prior to a person being sentenced.
The Irish Independent article had referred to a number of specific matters about which the DPP complained. It referred to the accused's "deadly cunning", the arrangements he made to avoid the serious charges involved by fleeing the country and going to a country in which he could not be touched by Irish law as no extradition treaty existed between it and Ireland.
Ms Justice Dunne said it was possible those matters could have been ventilated before the trial judge at the sentencing hearing. However, when the articles were published, they were not then, or subsequently, put before the sentencing judge in evidence.
Ms Justice Dunne said the crucial issue in a case such as this was not whether the trial judge had been affected, but whether there had been an interference with the administration of justice. In her judgment, there was such an interference.