Information Note on the Court’s case-law 193
February 2016
Dallas v. the United Kingdom - 38395/12
Judgment 11.2.2016 [Section I]
Article 7
Article 7-1
Nullum crimen sine lege
Juror’s committal for contempt of court for disobeying judge’s instructions to jury not to conduct Internet research into case they were trying: no violation
Facts – The applicant was a juror sitting in a criminal trial. Before the trial commenced the jurors were warned – in a video, by the court’s jury officer and by notices in the jury’s waiting room – not to use the internet to research cases in which they were sitting. During the course of the trial, the judge also warned the jurors not to go on the Internet or try to do any research of their own. Before the jury returned its verdict it came to the trial judge’s attention that the applicant had conducted research on the Internet and shared prejudicial information she had discovered about the defendant with her fellow jurors. The jury was discharged and the Attorney General applied for the applicant’s committal for contempt of court. In her defence the applicant argued that while it was true that she had conducted some research which had resulted in her coming across a newspaper report about the defendant, she had not possessed the “specific intent” required under the domestic law of contempt to impede or create a real risk of prejudicing the due administration of justice. The domestic courts rejected that argument, holding that intent in a case such as the applicant’s did not have to be separately established but could be inferred from foresight of the consequences of deliberately disobeying an order of the judge. The applicant was found guilty of contempt by the Divisional Court and given a custodial sentence.
In the Convention proceedings, she contested the accessibility and foreseeability of the law of contempt of court as it had been applied in her case.
Law – Article 7 § 1: The Court deemed it appropriate to examine the applicant’s allegations solely under Article 7 § 1 of the Convention. There was no dispute between the parties that, under the domestic law, two elements had to be shown to establish common-law contempt, namely, an act creating a “real risk” of prejudice to the administration of justice, and an intention to create that risk.
As to the first element (an act creating a “real risk” of prejudice) the Court rejected the applicant’s argument that the Divisional Court had lowered the threshold of the test for contempt by omitting the word “real” from its description of the risk: the Divisional Court had in fact held that the applicant had caused “actual prejudice” to the due administration of justice, not merely a risk of such prejudice.
As to the question of intent, the Court considered that it must have been quite evident to any juror that deliberately introducing extraneous evidence into the jury room contrary to an order of the trial judge amounted to intending to commit an act that at the very least carried a real risk of being prejudicial to the administration of justice. In deciding that specific intent could be derived from the foreseeability of the consequences of certain actions, the Divisional Court was not replacing the specific intent test with a test of “breach of an order” or with a more basic intent test. Rather, it was finding the specific intent test to be met in the circumstances of the applicant’s case. This approach to proof of specific intent had clear precedent. By stating that intent could be demonstrated by the foreseeability of consequences, the Divisional Court had not overstepped the limits of what could be regarded as an acceptable clarification of the law.
The Court also rejected the applicant’s argument that the judge’s direction had lacked clarity. It could not be considered ambiguous, especially when taken in the context of the other information provided to the applicant by the jury officer, the notices posted around the court building and the applicant’s oath of affirmation at the start of the trial. The jury members were clearly told not to “go on the internet”, not to “try and do any research of [their] own” and not to deal with the case in any way after leaving the courtroom. On any interpretation of the judge’s direction, going on the Internet to conduct research into the defendant’s previous conviction was clearly prohibited.
The test for contempt of court applied in the applicant’s case had thus been both accessible and foreseeable. The law-making function of the domestic courts had remained within reasonable limits with the judgment in her case being, at most, a step in the gradual clarification of the rules of criminal liability for contempt of court through judicial interpretation. Any development of the law had been consistent with the essence of the offence and could have reasonably been foreseen.
Conclusion: no violation (unanimously).
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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