Trial by media - is it just?

[rory_20_uk]

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Jack Tweed, the widower of the reality television star Jade Goody, was cleared yesterday of raping a teenage student six months after his wife died of cancer.

Mr Tweed and a friend were accused of attacking the 19-year-old after meeting her at a nightclub in Mayfair.

The jury took less than half an hour to clear both men of rape after hearing that the woman had been excited by being in a celebrity’s home and had searched for pictures of Goody, a star of Channel 4’s Big Brother.

Mr Tweed, 22, has been embroiled in a series of lurid stories over the past year about his sex life and the financial legacy of his wife.
Related Links

He and Anthony Davis, 26, had met the student and three female friends at the Embassy club in West London in September last year. Mr Tweed’s group included unnamed cast members from BBC 1’s EastEnders and a former Big Brother contestant.

Linda Strudwick, for the prosecution, told Snaresbrook Crown Court that the attack occurred after some of the group returned to Mr Tweed’s flat in Woodford Green, Essex. It was alleged that Mr Davis pushed the student into a bedroom and called Mr Tweed to join him.

Ms Strudwick said that the woman was shy, sober and “made it plain to both defendants that she was not interested in them sexually”. But Mr Tweed said the woman had had consensual sex with him. “She was flirty towards me and very friendly,” he said.

“We looked at each other and just started kissing. We made eye contact. I may have made the first move. She was kissing me back and had her arms round me, running her hand through my hair and down my back.”

He said he had no idea that Mr Davis was in the room spying on them until his friend knelt on the bed.

Mr Davis said that he had walked into Mr Tweed’s bedroom and “enjoyed” seeing the pair have sex and joined in because she did not protest.

He told police: “She didn’t say stop. She didn’t say anything to suggest she didn’t want it to happen. She didn’t say anything at all.”

Sean Minihan, defending Mr Davis, said the woman had “cried rape” because she was ashamed of her threesome. He told the jury she had consented to sex but “sorely regretted it” when her friends called her a “little slut”.

The student denied making up the rape accusations because she was ashamed of sleeping with two men or that she had been “excited” to be in a celebrity’s house. She insisted that she had not gone from room to room looking for photographs of Goody.

After being cleared Mr Tweed, a nightclub promoter, issued a statement which read: “I’m relieved that the jury have taken a matter of minutes to see through these scurrilous and completely groundless allegations. I now want to put the last eight months behind me.”

He added: “I’d first like to thank my family and friends and everyone who stood by me.”

Mr Tweed married Goody in February last year in a “fairytale” ceremony, fulfilling her dying wish because she had terminal cervical cancer.

The groom, who was on a curfew after being released part-way through an 18-month prison sentence for assaulting a 16-year-old boy, was given special permission to spend his wedding night with Goody.

Goody died on Mothering Sunday. A month later Mr Tweed was jailed for 12 weeks for assaulting a taxi driver after a night out in May 2008.

After his release Mr Tweed was pictured partying at nightclubs and a month before the rape allegation three girls told a newspaper of an eight-hour drunken “sex party” at his home.

Here is a typical article where for several months now the accused has had his picture and details plastered all over the papers. The accuser is still not named. The jury took a whole 15 minutes to acquit him of the charges.

I feel that it is unfair that seemingly anyone accused of a sufficiently juicy crime can have their details in the papers, but rarely does the person accusing suffer the same fate.

Do others feel that this treatment is appropriate, or should all details be withheld until after the case has been decided in court?

[al Roumi]

You've picked an interesting example to illustrate the point. Although the article appears to be in final analysis of the events, rather than the hot headed pseudo current affairs reporting as stories emerge, it seems fairly balanced both in its consideration of Mr Tweed's reputation and the allegations put to the court.

Why not pick one of the more rabid pieces on something like peadophilia, child abuse or Shannon Mathews? Or even a story from earlier in the proccess of the case (unless you assume we are all well acquainted with Mr Tweed's affaires ).

To actually answer your question, I know there are already laws to limit how much can be reported of on-going cases. They are only "live" though once a case is put to court. Hence the usual media frenzy right up untill a case is presented to court, and then the black out (except in particlar circumstances -e.g. recent John Terry & Wayne Bridge's ex wife debacle), followed by media coverage of the end of the trial.

Maybe it's worth breaking down at what stages the media should be able to say certain things? That said, IMO it seems hard to legislate for the limitation or control of media reporting given the range of circumstances under which the media might do their own reporting until a case is put to trial. The media themselves would say that they can also be useful in tracking & appeals, so should not be fenced out.

On the other hand, you've got a debate of privacy laws, best exemplified by the gag JT's lawyers had for a week or so (witness Guardian articles stating that "there is a case going on involving an England football player who we can't name" and nothing more on the story).

[KukriKhan]

Hmmm. You do want to guard against tainting any potential jury of the accused's peers, to insure a fair, impartial trial. I assume the case at-hand (the link was 404 for me) had some salacious details that sold newspapers, and am glad to hear the fellow got an (apparent) fair trial - and acquittal, indicating that the news coverage got ignored by the jurors. If the Guardian and its source reported facts incorrectly, do you not have slander and libel laws?

[rory_20_uk]

I agree that there is the issue of spiking the jury, but more broadly if the papers are plastering that you are being accused of rape (as in this case) you might loose your current job, and certainly have difficulty in getting work. There are probably many other parts of one's life that will also suffer. Sure, true friends will stay, but sadly there are a lot of others that we rely on.

There are indeed laws on slander and libel. That will take months if you're lucky and there's no guarantee of getting compensation - let alone one's costs covered.

Being accused causes enough paralysis in one's life without pre-emptive (albeit lawful) media reporting. There are enough found guilty without needing to run stories on those merely accused.

[drone]

Allegedly.

Nancy Grace makes her living trying people in the media.

[Lemur]

If you're going to discuss trial by media, you owe it to yourself to read this article.

Three weeks after the FBI exonerated Hatfill, in the summer of 2008, Nicholas Kristof apologized to him in The New York Times for any distress his columns may have caused. The role of the news media, Kristof wrote on August 28, is “to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. Instead, I managed to afflict the afflicted.”

Many others who raised critical questions about Hatfill have remained silent in the wake of his exoneration. [...] Jim Stewart, the television correspondent whose report compared Hatfill to Al Capone, left CBS in 2006. Stewart admitted in a deposition to having relied, for his report, on four confidential FBI sources. When I reached the former newsman at his home in Florida, Stewart said he couldn’t talk about Hatfill because he was entertaining houseguests. When I asked when might be a good time to call back, he said, “There isn’t a good time,” and hung up.

“The entire unhappy episode” is how Don Foster, the Vassar professor who wrote the Vanity Fair article, sums up Hatfill’s story and his own role in it. Foster says he no longer consults for the FBI. “The anthrax case was it for me,” he told me recently. “I’m happier teaching. Like Steven Hatfill, I would prefer to be a private person.”

Foster says he never intended to imply that Hatfill was a murderer, yet continues to stand by his reporting as “inaccurate in only minor details.” I asked if he had any regrets about what he’d written.

“On what grounds?” he asked.

“The heartache it caused Hatfill. The heartache it caused you and Vanity Fair.”

Foster pondered the question, then said, “I don’t know Steven Hatfill. I don’t know his heartache. But anytime an American citizen, a journalist, a scientist, a scholar, is made the object of unfair or inaccurate public scrutiny, it’s unfortunate. It’s part of a free press to set that right.”