By Jane Lee
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- John Silvester: Adrian Bayley's reign of terror
- Adrian Bayley's savage history
- Sex workers targeted
For a time, it seemed no matter where you turned, you could not avoid seeing Adrian Bayley's name. After his conviction for Jill Meagher's rape and murder in 2013, he was mentioned in everything from politicians' speeches about parole to feminist blogs about violence against women.
Suppression orders prevented reports about latest trials of Adrian Bayley.
Ironically, the fact that we had all read so much about his crimes was the key to why there was no mention of Bayley's latest trials in the mainstream media.
Last June, County Court Judge Sue Pullen issued a suppression order against anyone publishing "any information relating to previous convictions, sentences, or previous criminal cases of the accused" until the trials began. The order also prohibited anyone from publishing anything about "any pending proceedings in relation to the trials in this matter."
Adrian Ernest Bayley leaving court during his trial for Jill Meagher's murder and rape.Credit: Jason South
This was to prevent "a real and substantial risk of prejudice to the proper administration of justice". It meant that no one could report the fact that Adrian Bayley was convicted of the murder of Jill Meagher, or on any of Bayley's current trials.
Judge Pullen also ordered that no one publish anything that would identify the address or telephone number of witnesses in the trial to avoid "causing undue distress or embarrassment to a complainant or witness in any criminal proceeding involving a sexual offence or a family violence offence".
Two weeks later, Bayley's lawyer, Saul Holt, argued that the new charges should be dropped, because the media's past demonisation of his client would make it impossible to find an unbiased jury, so that he could never get a fair trial. Judge Pullen allowed the trials to go ahead, but extended the orders against reporting on Bayley's criminal history, court proceedings or the witnesses involved until the trials concluded, which went unopposed.
Peter Dupas' lawyer tried a similar approach in 2010 when he argued the court should grant a permanent stay of his retrial over the murder of Mersina Halvagis, because publicity surrounding the case had created an unacceptable and unavoidable risk of a miscarriage of justice.
The High Court unanimously dismissed this, saying that trial could go ahead if judges appropriately warned juries to ignore media coverage and decide on a verdict without prejudice. A permanent stay would be "tantamount to a continuing immunity from prosecution".
When deciding whether a trial should go ahead, the court had to decide not only what was fair to the accused, but also the public interest in bringing them to trial, the judges said.
It might seem counter-intuitive to prevent bias by temporarily silencing facts that have been repeated a million times over. But the suppression orders created a brief window of time free from Bayley headlines to try to protect juries from making decisions based on popular opinion, rather than the evidence before them in separate criminal cases.
They also preserved Bayley's right to be presumed innocent, and helped ensure his expensive criminal trials were not prematurely halted, and avoided delaying a final outcome for all involved.