A Taste Of Their Own Medicine

The British press is continuing its rampage through the rights of a life prisoner subject to an anonymity order. Should proof of its largely despicable character be required, the ferreting by some of Fleet Street's more animalistic ferrets into the reasons behind Jon Venables's reincarceration may suffice. Nobody in power is speaking out against this. Government appears to have surrendered control of the criminal justice system to the media. And all the while, Shami Chakrabarti is nowhere to be seen. This is not her finest hour.

The reactions to Venables's reincarceration are evidence of that deeply unpleasant strain in the British national character which makes us want to hang and flog our neighbours, to do violence to those more vulnerable than ourselves with fists and feet. Venables committed the only crime for which he ever seems to have been convicted at the age of 10. It was an appalling crime; yet it was also a very unusual crime. The murders of children by children are extremely rare events. British politicians have a very bad habit of interfering with the workings of the criminal justice system. If our politicians had followed their baser instincts unimpeded by the European Court of Human Rights, it is likely that both Venables and Thompson would still be behind bars serving whole-of-life tariffs. It would be very interesting to find out whether the UK has been defeated in the European Court of Human Rights more frequently than any other state in cases subject to political interference, and where the consequences of that interference form the grounds of appeal. It wouldn't surprise me at all if that were the case. While the European Court has some deep flaws, we should at least be very grateful that it has been our last line of defence against the likes of the venomous Michael Howard, who wanted two 10 year old boys to spend 20 years in custody.

What do those who seem to wish Venables exposed, or who complain about the veil of secrecy which surrounds him - or which should surround him, given that it's being eroded on a daily basis by the yellow journalism of the London gutter - actually want to happen? Do they want to see him stabbed in prison? Do they want to see him lynched by his neighbours? What do they want? Would they prefer to have seen him hanged at the age of 10? Is that what they really want? How anyone could think these things is beyond me, but from what one reads of what is being published about this case that seems to be the mood into which the largely despicable press is trying to whip the public; not that many British people seem to need much whipping into an ecstasy of excitement at the thought of violent death being visited on someone they don't know. After all, as well as being a murderer, he might be a paedo! A beast!

What is needed in this case is for the DPP to step in and threaten to prosecute not just the reporters, not just the editors, but also the senior management of media outlets for contempt of court for their coverage of this case; or any other competent charge that might be levelled at them. That last sentence was wrong; in this case there is no case. All that has happened in this case is that the life licence system seems to have worked like a ha'penny watch and a lifer has been returned to prison pending the resolution of other matters. That's it. It happens day in, day out. It is routine. OK, Venables might not be languishing like Edmond Dantes in the Chateau d'If, but neither is he a fire-breathing dragon in its lair. He did a very cruel and wicked thing when he was a young boy. He may have done very cruel and wicked things as an adult, but we have laws for dealing with such cases, and one of those laws is that we observe other laws. British newspapers, and the British public, are often very keen to have other people feel the full force of the law. It's time the press took a taste of their own medicine.

First up should be the top bananas at the 'Sunday Mirror' for publishing unconfirmed and unconfirmable speculation regarding the reasons behind this reincarceration. A prosecution could be mounted on the basis that every new prisoner in his late 20's in custody for alleged child sex offences will be assumed by other inmates to be Jon Venables. This is likely to lead to either injury or loss of life. Publication of these details should therefore be considered to be the English equivalent of conduct likely to cause a breach of the peace.

Next up, it should be the turn of Keith Rupert Murdoch himself to be sitting in the dock, for chairing the company that has published an appalling piece of blathery, drivelling, saloon bar hackwork by one Eleanor Mills in today's 'Sunday Times' entitled 'Jon Venables had his chance'. The section that would, in a just world, have Keith facing the magistrates before being driven away in a Reliance van is,

"By breaching the terms of his licence and ending up back in prison, he has violated our trust. The anonymity order was there to protect him while he remained on the straight and narrow — and now that he is back in prison, we have the right to know what he has done."

This is factually incorrect. The anonymity order is absolute, and not conditional upon subsequent behaviour. We don't know if he's breached his licence. We don't know if he's guilty of anything, if only because he doesn't seem to have been tried yet. However, if Mills is suggesting that an anonymity order becomes null and void and thus become capable of being ignored because an anonymous person has been returned to custody, and that's the way I interpret what she has written, that is one of the most blatant, one of the most egregious, contempts of court in the history of British journalism. She is assuming that Venables has actually committed a crime - we don't know, and shouldn't know, if he has. We can't know until the law has run its course. The terms of an anonymity order are so sweeping that there might not be any legal way of knowing at all. Once more, with feeling - we don't know whether the reincarceration is the consequence of a conviction, or is an administrative step resulting from an allegation. As I wrote yesterday, the only thing we know is that the life licence system has worked in this case. That's it. It's done what it says on the tin. Mills's contention seems to take no regard of the presumption of innocence. Doesn't News International have lawyers?

But as hard as it might be to believe, there's a very much more serious reason why someone should answer for what the 'Sunday Times' has done today. In their desire to get someone, anyone, to write about this case, they may have compromised any prosecution likely to flow from the circumstances under which Venables has been reincarcerated. Is Jon Venables likely to get a fair trial from any British jury that knows he's Jon Venables? Obviously not, otherwise he wouldn't be the subject of an anonymity order. Anyone who thinks that he would doesn't know very much about the UK's criminal justice systems, and probably doesn't know much about the British people. We are a vengeful breed; witness those howling gangs of free people who surround prison vans carrying suspects in notorious cases. All such mobs should be truncheoned and watercannoned until they disperse, something of a short, sharp lesson in the meaning of the words 'the presumption of innocence'.

If Venables's anonymity is compromised, my bet is that any prosecution he might be likely to face would be dropped on the basis that the mere fact of his identity having been revealed would be automatically prejudicial to a fair trial. Not only do Mills and her bosses not seem to know the law as it stands - they might just have done their bit to compromise future process. Mills whines at the cost of providing Venables with false identities; she might just have helped ensure that more public funds have to be spent to that end.

And let's just say for a moment, OK, maybe he has committed a crime - how are the interests of any such crime's victims served by the person responsible for that crime not being prosecuted? Our egostistical, lumpen, largely despicable press would not bat an eyelid at a prosecution failing because of press incompetence; they'd be blaming the judges while lining up to try get the victim to sell their story instead.

In the very recent past, a member of Newskorp's staff has been sent to custody for the very serious crime of illegally intercepting communications. In the UK, our laws on the disqualification of company directors are notoriously weak and unsatisfactory; in this country, you can get away with just about anything if you say you run a business - if your business is large enough, that is. However, we do have laws allowing for the recovery of assets procured from the proceeds of crime. I don't know whether Newskorp ever ran transcripts of illegally intercepted calls or used them as leads to get other 'stories', but if they did, then any profit they made from those stories should surely be recoverable under the proceeds of crime laws. If such violent profits are not recoverable, that's a state of affairs begging to be changed.

Many years ago, I acted for a pair of shopkeepers being prosecuted for a contravention of the food hygiene laws. They were both willing to plead guilty, but the prosecutor agreed to let one go free while the other went into the dock. I remember the words the prosecutor used to justify that position very clearly - 'Your client has to take responsibility for his business'. Well, if that philosophy was good enough for my old client it's good enough for Keith Rupert Murdoch. Nothing will change in the British media's toxic culture until those at its top are personally held to account for the irresponsibility of the outlets they control. They make the decisions, they draw the dividends, they get the political access; it's time for them to start taking responsibility.

A free press is a good thing. An irresponsible press is a calamity.