News agency INS has successfully challenged a magistrates’ court
order which stopped the press naming a dead three year- old boy and the
defendant accused of murdering him.
The Section 39 order was imposed at a special hearing at Milton Keynes magistrates’ court on 3 January.
But
it was lifted the following day after Neil Hyde, editor of the Reading
based INS News Group, rang the court and pointed out it had no power to
ban publication of the boy’s name because he was dead, and that Section
39 gave no power to stop the identification of an adult defendant.
Hyde
said: “We saw a report of the case and the order on the Thames Valley
Police website. We rang the court and explained the ban on naming the
boy and defendant was not based on any law. They realised they had got
it wrong and the Section 39 was lifted. I am concerned that a a court
clerk did not have the knowledge that the court could not impose a
Section 39 in this case.” INS was then able to report that Nicholas
Halling, 34, of Dunstable, Bedfordshire, had been charged with the
murder of Deraye Lewis, of Milton Keynes, who died in hospital on New
Year’s Day.
Related
Halling was remanded in custody.
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