Microsoft need not remove online references to sex crime accused

A High Court judge has refused to order computer firm Microsoft to take down internet references to a previous court case involving a man due for trial later this year for sexual offences.

The man, who cannot be identified, was convicted by a jury earlier this year of an unconnected sexual assault on a woman.

The man's lawyers made applications to the court to order Google and Microsoft, which operates the search engine Bing, to temporarily expunge the man's name from the internet.

Refusing the application at the Central Criminal Court, Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy said the courts had to become accustomed to “the modern world” and to “cope with” the fact that there is information online about cases. He said that jurors could be trusted to be impartial.

Counsel for the accused said the previous trial was reported on and there was a concern that these published reports could prejudice the upcoming trial.

Lawyers for the Director of Public Prosecutions submitted to the court that juries can be relied on to judge a case fairly in the absence of a court order to remove online references to the man.

Determined

Prosecuting counsel said that even if search engines such as Bing and Google were to remove the man’s name from their results, the material would still be on the internet and any juror determined to research the case would be able to find this material.

Mr Justice McCarthy said he was quite satisfied that it was unnecessary to remove any online material.

“Jurors must be trusted to be impartial,” he said, adding that it was on this basis that the trial process proceeded.

Noting the trial around the “X case” – a 1992 rape case which was the centre of a controversial and high profile legal battle on the right to travel for an abortion – Mr Justice McCarthy said: “If that case can be tried, any case can be tried”.

He said jurors will have to be told carefully that “if the case before them rings any bell in their minds, they have to bring it my attention”.

He said that courts “have to become accustomed to the modern world”. He said there was potentially a vast amount of information online about cases variously coming before the courts and that “we have to live with it and cope with it as best we can”.