Comment: Who defends open justice from those who defend us? (From Hereford Times)

Comment: Who defends open justice from those who defend us?

9:42am Friday 27th January 2012 in News

THE Hereford Times was banned from identifying Mr G after the court heard from counsel for the Secretary of State for Defence in private.

We can report that the order banning his identification was made to “protect the personal safety and security and Convention rights of the defendant and those associated with him”.

Speaking in open court last Friday, District Judge Cadbury, who also heard a challenge to the ban from the Hereford Times, said: “This is an extremely rare application and human rights articles have clearly been engaged as have their competing rights, including Article 10: the Right to Freedom of Expression.

“Such an application must have careful scrunity and that is what happened in this case.”

COMMENT

MR G takes a works van into town out of work hours, drinks himself to twice the legal limit, then gets back behind the wheel to crash that van into a house causing around £40,000 worth of damage – miraculously no-one is seriously injured.

Mr G could have – and arguably should have - expected to face crown court on a dangerous driving charge or something equally as serious. But the charge Mr G faces in magistrates court is one of standard drink driving and with his identity protected. Because the military applied to the courts to keep his identity a secret. And won that right.

It is bad enough that the courts should effectively put Mr G above the basic principle of open justice but then to impose a sanction that is seen as unnecessarily lenient by those who were the victims of his crime diminishes some long-held principles.

As usual there was the customary peep show pantomime in the Telford court to keep Mr G hidden from view, and a blanket ban on anything that might lead to his identification in anyway was imposed.

But at the Hereford Times we’ve got used to dealing with these situations and it is the views of Martin and Pat Bailey, into whose home the drunken Mr G crashed, who articulate the reason why we will continue to challenge these gagging orders on behalf of a county and community the Ministry of Defence, and, on the evidence, the justice system, thinks it can take for granted.

The county’s military has some reaching out to do if it is not to alienate a community that rightly takes a pride in its presence.

It doesn’t need to hide behind balaclavas when it is among friends. Maybe it is those metaphorical balaclavas that stop it seeing who its friends are.