A report in the Press and Journal that Luke Mitchell had been charged with the murder of the schoolgirl Jodi Jones did not break the law, appeal court judges have ruled.

The newspaper was originally cleared in February of breaching the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act, after naming Luke Mitchell as being charged with the murder of Midlothian girl Jodi Jones, even though he was only 15.

Aberdeen Journals was charged under a section of the act which states that “no newspaper report of any proceedings in a court” shall reveal any details calculated to identify anyone aged under 16 involved in a case.

P&J editor Derek Tucker said afterwards: “We felt all along that the Crown was trying to blend the Contempt of Court Act with the Criminal Procedures (Scotland) Act in a kind of pick and mix approach with the provisions of one act applied to the other.

“Their original argument was based on that but by the time it got to appeal, they seemed to have entirely changed tack.

“The wording of the act is quite precise. The Crown’s case always seemed to be a non-starter and they have simply wasted public money on what was always going to be a lost cause.”

In the trial at Aberdeen Sheriff Court earlier this year Aberdeen Journals argued that the story was not a report of proceedings in court and therefore did not break the law.

Police had gone to a sheriff – in private – a week earlier to ask for a warrant to arrest Mitchell but the newspaper report did not mention that.

The newspaper’s barrister, Paul Cullen QC, conceded that if it had, the newspaper would have been in the wrong.

Sheriff Graham Buchanan concluded that the article, published on April 15 last year, was not a report of court proceedings.

The Crown later appealed against the not guilty verdict and the matter was considered by Lord Osborne, Lord Philip and Sheriff Principal CGB Nicholson – and an 11-page opinion was issued on Friday at the Appeal Court at the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh.

The basis of the appeal was whether Sheriff Buchanan was entitled to find that the newspaper article did not contain a report of any proceeding in a court, and whether, on the facts stated, he was entitled to make an acquittal.

The Crown argued that “proceedings” were not restricted to what happens within a courtroom and that restrictions should be extended to cover any consequences of court business.

The newspaper contended that the Crown had been wrong to present the dispute as a question of interpretation of the act when the relevant wording was “quite clear and unambiguous” and simply had to be applied to the facts of the case. Once this was done, Mr Cullen said, it could not be said that the article was a report of any court proceedings.

Furthermore, he argued that “great care” had been taken by the newspaper not to contravene the law.

The appeal judges ruling stated: “In our opinion, the words ‘newspaper report of any proceedings in a court’ are perfectly clear and comprehensible; and, when these words are considered in the context of the newspaper article in question, it cannot be said that the article is a report of ‘proceedings in a court’.

“What is reported in the article was undoubtedly, of course, brought about in response to earlier proceedings in a court; but that does not mean, in our opinion, that the arrest and charge by the police were themselves such proceedings.”