The High Court has found the Daily Mirror and The Sun newspapers guilty of contempt of court over articles concerning a suspect, Christopher Jefferies, arrested after the killing of Joanna Yeates
They have been fined £50,000 and £18,000, respectively.
Christopher Jefferies, Yeates’s landlord, was subsequently released without charge. A Dutch neighbour, Vincent Tabak, has admitted killing Yeates and pleaded guilty to manslaughter but not murder. His trial for murder will begin in the autumn.
The articles were published at a time when Jefferies was under arrest and therefore proceedings against him were “active” for the purposes of the Contempt of Court Act 1981.
Delivering judgment in Attorney-General v MGN Ltd, New Group Newspapers Ltd [2011] EWHC 2074 (Admin), the lord chief justice, Lord Judge, said: “No one was to know that before very long he would
be entirely exonerated.
From the point of view of the defendants that was purely adventitious, and as we shall see, it is irrelevant to our decision.”
