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Murder charge dad named after reporter’s S39 challenge

A man accused of murdering his six-year-old daughter has been named after a reporter challenged a court order in the case.

Sutton Guardian chief reporter Mike Murphy-Pyle overturned a section 39 order that had been imposed by magistrates banning identification of the dead child.

However when the case reached the Old Bailey, Mike persuaded the judge that such orders cannot be made in respect of dead children.

It meant the paper was able to name 36-year-old Ben Butler, of Westover Close, Sutton, as the defendant in the case.

In making his representations, Mike quoted guidance by the Judicial Studies board stating ‘Orders cannot be made in respect of dead children’.

The judge at the central criminal court agreed with his argument and lifted the order.

Guardian assistant editor Matt Watts said:  “Mike did really well to have the order lifted, but the situation illustrated a wider issue with court orders being put in place in magistrates courts without prior warning of the hearing to the media.

“The first anyone knew of the charges against Mr Butler was when the police sent out a statement after Mr Butler has appeared in court, and the section 39 had been  put in place

“This meant we had been deprived of the chance to make representations against the section 39 at the first hearing, when if we had, there was a strong chance it would never have been put in place.

“But without that chance to make those representations,  there were several days we were unable to properly report the case, that included our weekly print edition being published.”

15 comments

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  • March 20, 2014 at 7:28 am
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    Nice one chaps. Why don’t magistrate understand the basics about s39 rules…there’s only a few and they’re pretty basic…

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  • March 20, 2014 at 8:14 am
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    There’s too much of this sort of thing happening, and it’s not just restricted to magistrates’ courts. In my experience, the attitude seems to be “slap a S39 on it from the outset and only worry about whether it has any grounds in law if someone challenges it”. With fewer experienced journalists present in courts these days, more and more cases will proceed with unlawful restrictions on them.

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  • March 20, 2014 at 8:37 am
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    This annoys me as they should not have had to overturn it as a S39 cannot apply to someone who is dead.

    Surely judges who do this should be required to undergo a training refresher?

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  • March 20, 2014 at 9:31 am
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    Surely they could have just ignored the section 39 order since it was invalid and unlawfully issued in the first place?

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  • March 20, 2014 at 10:11 am
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    Another point: if this was a child killing, how come the first they heard of it was after the first court appearance, which of course would be revealed by law? Do the police tell them nothing around there?

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  • March 20, 2014 at 10:41 am
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    Can’t ignore the order once in place even if it’s invalid. Which makes it all the more frustrating.
    All court reporters should print out the guidelines from the Judicial Studies Board called Reporting Restrictions in the Criminal Courts. It contains everything you need to know and is very useful in challenging all court orders.
    Link here http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/Resources/JCO/Documents/Guidance/crown_court_reporting_restrictions_021009.pdf

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  • March 20, 2014 at 10:58 am
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    Clerks at our local magistrates court seem obsessed with slapping S.39 orders on anything and everything they think they can. Magistrates largely don’t know what’s going on and just do whatever the clerk tells them to. Ridiculous.

    They also routinely slap S.39 orders on sex cases involving children, apparently oblivious to the fact they already have anonymity. Idiots.

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  • March 20, 2014 at 11:44 am
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    It beggar’s belief that a court should impose a s39 on a dead child in this day and age, and possibly shows how far we still have to go in some areas.

    Well done wtf in praising the JSB protocol – I totally endorse your view. It’s a must for every newsdesk.

    That said, the document is now six years old and there’s a number of more recent rulings that should be incorporated into it. So how about re-opening negotiations, Mr Satchwell?

    And how about HTFP having a standing link to it on your home page?

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  • March 20, 2014 at 12:09 pm
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    Gladimoutofit touches on an important point, i.e. the first the Guardian knew of it was when the police informed them of the court appearance! I may be long in the tooth but not too long to remember when my news desk knew by 9.30am every Monday what cases were listed for the whole of that week. It appears the “new age” of journalism now allows public services to decide what is in the public interest. How sad, but at least I’ve a pension to console me.

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  • March 20, 2014 at 1:00 pm
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    It’s very depressing how the state seems determined to impose an almost complete lock-down on information.

    Everyone from coroners, councillors, judges and the police, are hell-bent on silencing the press.

    Weirdos.

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  • March 20, 2014 at 2:49 pm
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    GladImoutofIt, Onthefence,

    It wasn’t the first we knew about the incident, we’d known about it for months. The police kept bailing Mr Butler and told us he had been arrested on the morning he was due to appear in mags. We had been told he was going to appear in the afternoon but, unfortunately, he appeared in the morning meaning we missed it.

    We get a full court list each day for the following day but it doesn’t include remand cases arrested the previous day. We usually rely on our police contacts for them. They’re very helpful but, sadly, there are times like this when things go wrong.

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  • March 20, 2014 at 3:04 pm
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    In my experience it’s slipshod training of clerks to the justices and judges. Both should know better and check before just slapping the orders on. Magfistrates are guided by their trained clerks.

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  • March 20, 2014 at 4:15 pm
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    Onthefence – That weekly court list doesn’t even exist now. We have a ‘warned list’ system where people will appear in court any time in the three weeks following a certain date, and the lists are only compiled the day before. Often the court itself doesn’t even have accurate listings.

    We get the daily magistrates court lists sent over late on the afternoon before, but they do not include custody cases. When you go into the courtroom and ask for necessary details about custody cases – names, addresses, dates of birth – the clerks claim they don’t have the information yet. By the time there is a break in court proceedings after some of the cases have been handled, the clerks claim they no longer have the information as the usher has already taken the documents away to be filed.

    Far from behaving in a manner which would indicate that they understand their legal duty to provide this information, the clerks are generally as unhelpful as they can possibly be and do not make any attempt to obtain this information once it has been asked for. They often sarcastically state, on repeat: ‘It was already read out in open court’. True, but the microphones in the court are never switched on and the solicitors use the courtroom like a waiting room, loudly whispering to each other – sharing jokes and complaints – making it impossible to hear half of what’s said. Not to mention the amount of Polish, Romanian and Lithuanian people who come through our court, whose names I couldn’t possibly hope to spell correctly even if sound was optimal.

    It seems, as Bluestringer says, that every public service is in complete lock-down mode. The police press office no longer answers its phone and deals with all queries on an hours-long delay, after forcing you to leave a voicemail. Council press offices refuse to answer questions, instead issuing irrelevant, generic statements, but also refuse to put names on those statements so nobody can be held to account for their attempts to withhold public information.

    One council press office boss recently told my editor he had to request the date and minutes of a council meeting under Freedom of Information, and only handed them over (immediately, I might add) when he threatened to call the police.

    Our local coroner holds inquests behind a locked door, often not at the advertised times and sometimes without including them on the listings at all. Our court clerks refuse to identify criminals.

    And the only reason they’re all allowed to get away with it is because 1) the bankers piddled away all our money on their pathetic betting games and 2) newspaper proprietors do not care about journalism. A depleted journalistic workforce has no resource to properly hold all of these secretive propagandists and gatekeepers to account.

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  • March 21, 2014 at 9:35 am
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    Thanks LNH for that very detailed explanation. I’ve obviously been out of the loop for too long and will keep my mouth shut in future!

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