Contempt of Court
rust. as doses of a drug may cure patients of a j disease only at the risk of producing even more unpleasant symptoms as its side-effects. so there are times when the too-ready enforcement of the sub judice rule can do more harm than it prevents. The editor and proprietors of !he Scottish Daily Mail were heavily fined recently for printing an article and a photograph of a man who was being detained for questioning by the police because he was subsequently charged with a murder—roughly the equivalent. The Times legal correspondent suggested. of a newspaper in England being fined for contempt for publishing a story about a man who 11 as 'assisting the police with their inquiries' if the police decided later to charge him. There are occasions—this appears to have been one—when the newspaper' would have been wise to have exercised discretion. But it will be unfortunate if Lord Clyde's judgment is regarded as establishing in Scottish law Lord Goddard's English precedent, from the Micallef case; for this could put the press on both sides of the border in an extremely' delicate position.
Before the Micallef judgment, a newspaper editor could feel reasonably confident that he was in no danger of contempt proceedings--as distinct from libel--in reporting a crime, provided that nobody had been charged with it. But in certain circumstances, Lord Goddard suggested. the ' contempt rule could be made—as it were—retro- spective; where, for example, a newspaper prints matter concerning a criminal which the law for- bids being used as evidence against him when he is subsequently brought to trial. And the all- party lawyers' organisation, 'Justice' has recom-
mended that this principle should be enshrined in the legislation pending on contempt of court. But will there not then be a risk of deterring news- papers from performing a useful function; from exposing crooks and swindlers who are operating just within the law (or, at any rate, just outside the range of prosecution)? Take, for example, the case of a man with a criminal record who sets up some bogus commercial or educational establish- ment : are the papers to be prevented from warn- ing their readers about him simply because he is careful, at first, to avoid doing anything illegal? Some newspapers, admittedly, are inclined to stunt such stories as circulation-builders; but the service which they give the community is not necessarily the worse for that.
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