Irish Examiner view: Blocking the Internet hinders open justice

Readers in Britain have been banned from internet access to a forensic piece of research challenging the Lucy Letby verdict, published in the 'New Yorker' magazine. Picture: Yui Mok/PA

The case of Lucy Letby, the neo-natal nurse convicted of murdering seven newborns and attempting to kill six more at the Countess of Chester Hospital, is one of the most problematic in British legal history. 

The reporting of the case has been swathed in a multitude of court-imposed restrictions. A statutory public inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the crimes is set to start in September at Liverpool Town Hall.

Now readers in Britain have been banned from internet access to a forensic piece of research challenging the verdict, published in the influential New Yorker magazine.

MP David Davis told the House of Commons the restrictions on the 13,000-word article “seems in defiance of open justice”. Letby has sought leave to appeal against her convictions. She is due to be retried next month on one charge of attempted murder on which the jury could not reach a verdict. She has been sentenced to 14 whole-life orders.

When the verdict was announced last August, we commented on the broad scope of the anonymity orders which had been applied. Not only was protection applied to victims, a number of key witnesses were granted the cloak of invisibility in which to provide evidence. Pro-forma applications requesting blanket anonymity were submitted on behalf of families and supported by police. Lawyers for several of Letby’s colleagues made successful submissions, saying their clients’ mental health would suffer if they were identified.

Identification is a fundamental necessity of open justice. If lawyers want to mitigate the corrosive effect of social media, society is not only on the road to becoming ungovernable, but unreportable as well. 

Now the situation has become more complex because the families of some victims, but not others, are applying for this autumn’s inquiry to be livestreamed to prevent the spread of “grossly offensive” conspiracy theories.

The British legal system does not have a fine record in avoiding miscarriages of justice — consider the current Post Office case for example — that it can be relied upon to function beyond the gaze of the public.

The author of the New Yorker article, Rachel Aviv, says: “So much of the media coverage started at the point at which we’ve determined that Letby is an evil murderer; all her texts, notes, and movements are then viewed through that lens.”

Blocking access on the internet is usually the province of totalitarian societies such as China and Russia, but there is no shortage of lawyers willing to borrow from the playbook.

Taking a look at ourselves

In the space age, sky high city of Dubai, they have a gigantic picture frame 150m high by 95m wide. It’s a stunning piece of situation art which is also an observatory.

Its purpose is to allow the viewer to gaze from the past (the old town) to the future (the towering structures of a supercity), look back again, and no doubt reflect on the journey society is making.

Something of a similarly inspirational theme was being attempted in Dublin with the establishment of a real-time and unfiltered digital portal between O’Connell St and the sidewalk by the Flatiron Building in Manhattan.

The company which provides the service, Portals.org, has noble ambitions.

“Portals are an invitation to meet fellow humans above borders and prejudices and to experience our home — planet Earth — as it really is: United and one” says its publicity.

Unfortunately, a number of people in Dublin didn’t read the script and the portal — which platforms images but not audio — was powered down after inappropriate behaviour which included flashing body parts, showing swear words on phone screens, displaying images of the Twin Towers on 9/11, and holding up swastikas. 

This doesn’t sit well with the programme to promote Dublin’s overseas appeal, which has suffered some setbacks with last year’s serious attack on an American tourist in the city centre.

Now, what is meant to be an entertaining and whimsical diversion to make people feel closer together, has been hijacked by a small number of boors. Small wonder that the Minister for Public Expenditure, Paschal Donohoe, was quick to sound off and defend the reputation of the capital city.

“You only have to see the numbers of people coming to Dublin at the moment to spend their summer holidays here to know that the standing of Dublin in the eyes of the rest of the world is still really, really high,” he said.

As the portal reopens, let’s hope that’s true. There is no news of these problems at the other portal locations in Poland and Lithuania. Perhaps they have a different kind of craic there?

Keeping time

The speed at which technology becomes obsolete can take many of us by surprise. There must be many people wondering how to get data off their 3.5-inch floppy disks since they stopped being manufactured in 2011. And there’s a healthy market for recovering images from old VHS videos.

Cork City Council have a problem bigger than most. It spent more than €136,000 to buy and store a traditional Irish music collection almost 20 years ago, but it has now been deemed technically irretrievable.

The Ceol traditional music and culture exhibition opened in Dublin in 1999.

In 2007, Cork bought the collection for €75,000 hoping to rehouse or exhibit it in the Shandon area. But a permanent home was never secured.

 In 2019, it was decided that fundamental elements of the exhibition including electrical equipment and computers were unsalvageable. To the initial purchase price were added archive costs of €61,568.

It’s a melancholic story. Let us hope that something can be saved and, one day, like vinyl, become available to a new audience.