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Justice, Public Interest And Open Justice

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Contempt of court implies to the courts ' ability to punish individuals that might interfere with the course of justice and the court system. Criminal proceedings are acknowledged as being active through the 1981 act when an individual has been arrested without warrant; the grant of a warrant for arrest; the grant of a warrant to cite; or service of an indictment or other document specifying the charge. A Criminal proceeding will cease to be active when a verdict, sentence has been reached. Inference with the court system can take many forms, therefore there are grave contempt’s which could result in imprisonment of the editor or journalist. The essence of contempt ensures that an individual gets a fair trial; a part of the of the Human …show more content…

There two forms of contempt of court; Common law which focuses on actions which might interfere with the course of justice. Strict liability, which forbids any material which could create a substantial risk against the course of justice that, would cause serious impeded or prejudiced to be published. This was the issue in the case of Chris Jefferies. Jefferies was arrested by police pending the investigation of the murder of Joanna Yeates, he was her landlord. The Sun and Mirror subjected Chris Jeffries to a number character-assassinating and printed several front page headlines which suggested that Jefferies was guilty while the investigation continued such as ‘Could this man hold the key to Joanna’s murder?. The defamatory articles strongly suggested that there was good reason to suspect that Mr Jefferies had murdered Joanna Yeates. Two days after Mr Jefferies was arrested, he was released and police confirmed he was no longer a suspect. Joanna 's neighbor, Vincent Tabak was found guilty of her murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. By this time Mr Jefferies photograph had been splashed on the front page of several papers making him instantly recognizable. The newspapers lost because they had wrongly published untrue and harmful articles about Jefferies while he was in custody and

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