Courtroom drama followed the Grimsby Telegraph’s latest bid to publish pictures of people involved in major court cases.

The paper has campaigned for years against a police’s refusal to issue photographs, following conviction, except in cases such as rape and murder.

When a local man appeared before Grimsby Crown Court on charges involving the American Customs Service, attempts to import a revolver and association with the Ku Klux Klan, the Telegraph felt a picture was an essential part of its coverage.

The police were asked to provide one of the accused and his KKK uniform – provided the man was convicted. They declined.

So deputy news editor Sarah Spencer commissioned a local artist – who works in the paper’s process department – to go to court and produce a drawing of the accused and the KKK uniforms, which had been displayed as part of the evidence.

He was told not to draw in court, but to remember what he’d seen and then leave to do his work.

A friendly detective was not so sure that this restriction applied. He thought he’d seen people sketching in court before and checked with the prosecution barrister.

The barrister decided to put the matter before the judge, Michael Heath, who in turn asked reporter Olinka Koster to tell him why such drawings were required.

In the witness box, Ms Koster said the real issue was whether there was any possibility of sketching while the court was in session.

The judge said he did not know and went to consult his law books.

He returned a few minutes later to say pictures could not be drawn in court but the the paper was perfectly within its rights to produce them from memory.

Telegraph editor Peter Moore said: “None of this would have had to be done had the police simply agreed to issue pictures at the end of the trial.”

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