Written answer by Minister for Law, K Shanmugam, to Parliamentary Question on publishing accused persons' photographs and details

14 MAY 2012

14 May 2012 Posted in Parliamentary speeches and responses

Mr Lim Biow Chuan, Mountbatten

Question
To ask the Minister for Law whether he will consider introducing a law to ban the publication of photographs and details of any accused person until the accused person is convicted in a court of law.

Answer

  1. I assume Mr Lim’s question is prompted by the recent publicity over the 40-odd men accused of having commercial sex with a minor.

  2. Our legal system operates on the principle of public justice. Accused persons are publicly tried. The verdict of the court is publicly announced. Reporting of ongoing proceedings is allowed so long as it does not prejudice the proper administration of justice. The exceptions to the principle are limited – they mainly apply to protect sensitive information relating to national security, as well as the identities of young persons and the victims of sexual offences.

  3. It is undeniable that accused persons often suffer from the adverse publicity arising from their cases. This was raised in 1996 in this House by Dr Kanwaljit Soin, who asked A/P Ho Peng Kee if the identity of persons accused of sexual offences could be withheld from the public until and unless there is a conviction.

  4. Lawyers from the Bar would know that the publicity from a criminal trial is often very damaging to the accused, even if he is ultimately acquitted. That has been my experience. For example, I once acted for a solicitor who was accused of dishonestly making a false claim in court. He was eventually acquitted by the Court of Appeal. However, the protracted litigation and the regular headlines of him being charged with dishonesty adversely affected his practice, and damaged him in many other ways. There are many other similar experiences I and others at the Bar can recount in respect of accused persons whom we have defended.

  5. If we want to prevent the accused from being publicly identified until and unless he is convicted, there are two possible ways. (1) Empower the court to make a gag order, prohibiting the publication of any information that may identify the accused. The public and the press can still attend the proceedings. (2) Hold the proceedings in camera and prevent the public and the press from attending the proceedings altogether.

  6. The first way will not be effective. The identity of the accused will still be known to all who attend court. From there, it can become public. And imposing a gag order on those who do observe the court proceedings would mean (even if the order is effective) that there is a differential in knowledge between those who attend court and those who do not. That is not very satisfactory.

  7. The second way could possibly be effective. But it would also amount to not having open trials. Should all trials where the accused may be affected by the publicity be held in private? Effectively that must mean most if not all criminal trials. Do we want that?

  8. The question therefore comes down in essence to this: do we want all criminal trials to be held in private or in open court? There are trade-offs either way, but I think on balance it is probably better to have trials in open court in the majority of cases. Justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done; and there need to be good grounds to make exceptions to this rule. The solution to adverse publicity during ongoing proceedings must be to increase public awareness that a charge is not the same as a conviction, and that an accused person is presumed to be innocent until he is found guilty by a court of law. But I accept and recognise that this is a significantly uphill task.

Last updated on 25 Nov 2012