Secret lawyers

The Court of Appeal has ruled:

The application for name suppression of Mr Tarrant’s counsel is granted and an order made permanently prohibiting publication of Lawyer A and Lawyer B’s names, addresses, and identifying particulars under s 202 of the Criminal Procedure Act 2011.

This is a bad blow against open justice. Never before (to my knowledge has the identity of lawyers been suppressed). This sets a bad precedent.

I could understand the decision if there had been very serious threats made against the lawyers in this case. But in fact there hasn’t been. Quite properly people understand it is a lawyer’s job to make sure a client gets a fair defence.

The essence of the evidence is that they, as senior criminal defence lawyers, have been subjected to extensive abuse and threats of harm because of acting for defendants in other cases who have attracted significant public opprobrium.

So there have been threats in other cases, and this is used to justify suppression in this case where there were not significant threats. This now lowers the barrier for future cases.

The evidence before us does not identify specific risks of abuse or threats to Lawyer A and Lawyer B.

This is why it is such a bad ruling. It was made on possibilities, rather than actual evidence.

I hope the media and the crown appeal.