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Name Suppression

and why it has become an irrelevancy in the internet age

The laughable attempt in 2000 by the Courts to suppress the name of Peter Lewis, the pot smoking billionaire, came unstuck in short order. Many knew within a week, including some who were not even all that interested. The only thing that prevented his name from being disseminated even more widely was the triviality of the offence concerned. Had it not been a victimless offence, his name would have got around the Net, newsgroups and personal emails even faster. Before very long it will only be realistic to instigate name suppression at the request of the victim, or not at all, as the population becomes increasing connected and net-savvy.

There is another aspect to name suppression, and that it not only protects the guilty, but can also harm the innocent. A couple of cases demonstrate this, one being that of the three Christchurch businessmen who ended up being unjustly accused of trying to procure a twelve year old girl for sex. Somebody else was actually guilty, but his name was suppressed. However enough info leaked out that rumours got out that one of these businessmen was the guilty party. None of them were, and all of them and their families suffered as a result. The antidote to such scurrilous rumours is always the truth - not attempts to conceal it. Eventually the Court had the good sense to concede the point and lift the suppression.

History has repeated itself more recently, with a case of an Auckland bar owner before the courts on drug rape charges. Again his name was suppressed, and another high profile Auckland bar owner ended up wearing accusations as a result. He is fighting to have the suppression lifted. This is quite unjust to an innocent man, and once again the only antidote will be the distribution of the truth. Unfortunately it is likely that more people will suffer in this fashion before the lessons sink in to the powers that be.

Some people never learn... name suppression was recently imposed by Judge Philip Recordon in the case of an All Black player who had assaulted his then pregnant wife. This of course has created widespread interest in the case. And, as was pretty much inevitable... the offender's name turned up on an internet site based in the UK, demonstrating once more the utter futility of name suppression except where instigated by the victim. Within hours the link was all over the Trade me message forums and other online forums.

The name suppression order has in this case been rather counter-productive for the person concerned, as apparently the actual assault was of an extremely trivial nature. Had he simply let the full truth come out nobody would have been particularly interested, and the whole matter would have been dismissed and forgotten about within days. As it is, the name suppression has generated controversy and much discussion - along with speculation about which All Black did it. As a result the reputation of all the other current All Blacks - who are innocent of any wrongdoing - has also been besmirched, as people not only do not know who did it, but also have not been told the true gravity or otherwise of the offence. Here indeed is a situation where much less harm would have been done had the truth been revealed.

Yet again, history repeats itself, with the case of the six celebrities who found themselves facing various drug charges in June 2005. One of them complained that all his friends knew within days - they had all received the details in emails that had circulated within hours. And, as usual, numerous guessing games played out upon the Trade Me and Smile City forums and elsewhere, with participants working the names out by the collective pooling of hints and scraps of data. Interestingly the same occurred in the Graham Capill case - Trade Me's users acting as a collective mind that deduced his identity correctly days before the suppression was released.

If anyone seriously thinks that they can prevent names from getting out, particularly if a determined victim or their family wants them distributed, they need to think again. As newsgroups, message boards and now chat programmes such as IRC and Messenger proliferate, along with numerous file sharing applications competing for Napsters' mantle, it is going from extremely difficult to downright impossible to control the flow of information. And then there is text messaging from cellphones and more.... See article "Information wants to be Free" for more about this.

Those that wish to suppress names against the victim's will are going to have to reconsider their position. Once upon a time, when most of the information about a court case went through newspapers and radio, and later TV, it was viable. These forms of communication are "one to many" and stopping information from getting to the papers and to the state owned broadcasing networks was feasible. Now they are up against forms of communication that are "many to many" - and the victim or their loved ones, if they are connected and reasonably tech-savvy may have almost as much ability to distribute information today as a newspaper did 50 years ago. And if the victim and their family have large numbers of sympathisers, then stopping the names of offenders from getting out will be a futile task.

This article is by Peter Jenkins (the webmaster here). If you wish to use it in your own work, go right ahead, help yourself. Some acknowledgement of the source i.e. Sensible Sentencing Trust would be appreciated.