Chitchat The Administration of Justice (Protection) Bill and its immediate impact

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

The above bill was tabled in Parliament on Monday and it has not been even passed and note the immediate impact.

The alleged murder of 26 year old Shawn Rodrigues by 20year old NSman Ryan Lim over a series of stalking incidents which was reported by family members multiple times over a year with police reports made and 999 calls made has scared the living the daylight of everyone including our brave independent news blogs.

This is an obvious case of Police gross negligence where one life has been lost and another ruined needlessly and not a peep squeak.

Here is what former well known PAP mouthpiece has to say about the new proposed law. Note the fear factor level in this article.


http://themiddleground.sg/2016/07/11...ff-mouth/Think twice before you shoot off your mouth
Jul 11, 2016 09.23PM | The Middle Ground linkedin

by Bertha Henson and Wan Ting Koh

ON THE day that a new Bill is introduced in Parliament specifying what is contempt of court, you have the police issuing a warning to those who are speculating about the death of a 26-year-old in Yishun. It looks like the G is taking loose talk that might prejudice the course of justice very, very seriously.

Here’s what the police said:

“The Police will conduct a thorough investigation and there will be proceedings in Court, in relation to the death of the deceased. Pending the Court proceedings, everyone should refrain from commenting or speculating about the case, and what may or may not have happened. Commenting, speculating on issues, which will have to be dealt with in Court proceedings, may be sub judice.

The full and true facts will be established in Court. Once the proceedings are over, and the facts have been established, people are free to comment on the matter, the facts, including the conduct of all the parties, the investigations, and the legal process.”

You might think it’s natural for people to talk about crime cases but it’s actually sub judice, especially when a suspect has been arrested as is the case here.

The Administration of Justice (Protection) Bill pulls together everything about contempt of court, which is the only piece of legislation that is not in the Statutes. Instead it is based on common law, or past judgments on the issue.

Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam said there were three aspects to the Bill, which cover interfering with court proceedings, making personal allegations against the judge, and disobeying court orders, such as in the case of husbands who don’t pay maintenance even after being ordered by the court.

He told reporters: “You can criticise the judgement, you can criticise the law, but what you can’t say is that the judge was biased or motivated by personal considerations because you have to maintain the integrity of the judiciary and protect it from these sorts of allegations. If there is a genuine complaint against the judge there are channels to make it, CPIB, the Chief Justice. There are proper channels.”

So the Bill looks like nothing extraordinary, since it is a matter of making what constitutes contempt of court explicit and transparent. In fact, it’s been in the works for six years and it actually spells out the defences which can be applied if someone is charged with contempt.

But there’s an interesting bit worth noting, known as a “non-publication direction” which states: “The Attorney‐General may, if he or she is satisfied that it is in the public interest to do so and with the leave of the High Court under subsection (7), direct the publisher of any matter to refrain from or cease publishing that matter.”

This applies both to offline and online media. You wonder how this is going to work with online media. Will it be like the way the Protection from Harassment Act works, with aggrieved parties being able to avail themselves of this quick way to stop misinformation affecting them from spreading? Except that in this case, it is the Attorney-General who applies for this order. Is this, in online parlance, equivalent of a “take down” order?

The effectiveness of such a measure would depend on the speed of the court application and action, since a post can go viral within minutes. Not taking down the supposedly offending post would be going against a court order, which could mean a fine not exceeding $20,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months, or both.

Remember the Benjamin Lim case which got Mr Shanmugam all hot under the collar in Parliament in March? He accused The Online Citizen (TOC) of not just publishing inaccurate information but also being in contempt of court because a coroner’s inquiry into the death was pending. He said online media outlets, TOC and “its ilk”, showed little regard for this principle when it went out in full force on the suicide of the 14-year-old. It published 25 articles in all, including those from contributors, which made a connection between the police interview of the boy and his death.

“Just because you are online doesn’t mean you get a free pass and you can say what you like… It is even more egregious when it is all a bunch of lies,” said Mr Shanmugam.

Asked earlier today if the new law would apply in this case, he said that if TOC was found to have committed contempt of court, it would be caught by the existing law regardless of the Bill.

“The Bill does not create a new law of contempt… When you run a campaign based on lies to deal with issues which are going to be dealt with in court proceedings, you are trying to pre-judge issues, and I listed the lies of TOC. Absent the Bill, the law would continue to apply.”

Expect controversy if or when the first such notice is delivered to an online platform. There would be arguments about legitimate take-downs and plenty of finger-pointing of others who do the same but yet aren’t on the radar. There would be arguments about “selectivity”, as is already the case with police action against two civil society activists accused of flouting election rules.

Then there will be those who raise the spectre of a police state in which no one dare say anything about court cases or judges in case they put a foot wrong.

Much really depends on whether the Attorney-General wants to make a big deal of what has been said, online or not, and whether he thinks there is a real risk of bringing the judiciary into disrepute or influencing the outcome of a trial.

Even if he believes so, there is no guarantee that a court will agree. If you are thinking of shooting off your mouth here and say “of course, the court will agree”, please refrain. There will be scandalising of the judiciary here.


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