The Attorney General, Dominic Grieve, has warned Facebook and Twitter users against commenting about ongoing British court cases.

Grieve said that any people using social media to make those comments could be committing ‘contempt of court’. It comes amid the ongoing trial of the two men accused of the very public murder of off-duty soldier Lee Rigby.

Educating Users

The Attorney General issued the warning when he published new court advisory notes, that extend advice which until now has only covered traditional media outlets, to include social media.

The advisories are designed to ensure a fair trial and to ‘educate’ social networking users in England, Wales and Northern Ireland about the comments they make about court cases, as the comments need to comply with the Contempt of Court Act 1981.

“Blogs and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook mean that individuals can now reach thousands of people with a single tweet or post,” said Dominic Grieve QC MP. “This is an exciting prospect, but it can pose certain challenges to the criminal justice system.”

“In days gone by, it was only the mainstream media that had the opportunity to bring information relating to a court case to such a large group of people that it could put a court case at risk,” he said, “That is no longer the case, and is why I have decided to publish the advisories that I have previously only issued to the media.”

“This is not about telling people what they can or cannot talk about on social media; quite the opposite in fact, it’s designed to help facilitate commentary in a lawful way,” Grieve said. “I hope that by making this information available to the public at large, we can help stop people from inadvertently breaking the law, and make sure that cases are tried on the evidence, not what people have found online.”

Online Publishing

The new guidance as comes after problematic tweets, posts and other information published on social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter. Some concern criminal cases, while others concern more conventional libel.

The murder trial of Lee Rigby for example is currently ongoing in the courts. And last month a man was handed a suspended prison sentence for contempt, after he knowingly breaching an injunction and tweeted images purporting to be of Jamie Bulger’s killer Jon Venables, who has been given a new identity by the state.

More recently Peaches Geldof, the daughter of Band Aid founder Bob Geldof, was forced to apologise for tweeting the names of two mothers whose babies were abused by the Welsh rock singer Ian Watkins.

And earlier this year Lord McAlpine undertook legal action against some Twitter users who wrongly named him on the micro-blogging site.

Other cases that raised the ire of the legal profession in the past have also included the court case of Paul Chambers, who famously ‘threatened’ to blow up Robin Hood airport in south Yorkshire after it was shut by a snow storm.

Chambers’ appeal against his conviction in the High Court – which he eventually won in July 2012 – triggered a slew of comments on social networking websites. This promoted the then Lord Chief Justice Igor Judge to warn that Google and Twitter were threatening the justice system, with jurors using the Internet to reveal details of cases and accessing material on the web that may prejudice their view of the case.

“We cannot stop people ‘tweeting’, but if jurors look at such material, the risks to the fairness of the trial will be very serious, and ultimately the openness of the trial process on which we all rely would be damaged,” said Lord Judge.

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