Guardian Unlimited
Fiona Bawdon
Media disgust with QC who cross-examined Dowler family is a blurring of lines that can lead to personal attacks on lawyers
Jeffrey Samuels QC was vilified by parts of the media after his cross-examination of the parents of Milly Dowler during the trial that ended with the murder conviction of his client, Levi Bellfield.
Lawyers acting for murder defendants do not expect to win many popularity contests, but nor, until recently, have they expected to be the subject of personal attacks by the press.
The treatment of Samuels is part of a growing trend for the media to blur the previously well-understood lines between lawyers and the clients they speak for in a professional capacity.
After the Bellfield case Samuels was described as "boastful" (for allowing his chamber's website to characterise him as sought-after and highly effective), as earning "hundreds of thousands of pounds" acting for "heinous criminals", and as a resident of a "large, five-bedroom, £1.4m detached house in Prestwich".
One columnist even suggested the Dowler family might have found his cross-examination particularly unpalatable because he resembled his client.
For all the vilification, though, Samuels got off relatively lightly compared with other lawyers who have acted for controversial clients.
Probably the most shameful example is that of the leading civil liberties solicitor Saimo Chahal, who was demonised in the media for representing Peter Sutcliffe, the murderer dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper, as he sought get a tariff after which he could be considered for release from his life sentence.
That case prompted a tabloid feeding frenzy with Chahal, rather than Sutcliffe, the target of much of the vitriol. "How could a WOMAN fight to win freedom for The Ripper?" thundered a five-deck headline in the Sun. Many readers would be "astonished a FEMALE lawyer is leading his fight", the paper proposed.
Other coverage suggested Chahal had no business acting for Sutcliffe as she was the mother of a teenage daughter.
Large photographs of Chahal were published, alongside those of Sutcliffe and his 13 female victims (in the Daily Mail her picture was four times the size of Sutcliffe's).
Most despicably of all the columnist Richard Littlejohn suggested Chahal, who has a long record of bringing groundbreaking cases, might have a crush on Sutcliffe; the writer likened her to "one of those madwomen who write to serial killers and end up marrying them". The male barrister in the case, Paul Bowen, did not warrant a mention in any of the coverage.
Fairly predictably, Chahal received a barrage of hate mail and threats, from as far away as Australia.
In Samuels' case, the Sun reported that, after being bombarded with threatening emails, the barrister was offered a panic alarm at his home and a "cop guard".
The threats made against Chahal and Samuels might not have been serious, but by tarring lawyers with the same brush as their clients, the media is playing a dangerous game.
Just recently, the Scots lawyer Paul McBride QC was among a group of people associated with Celtic football club to be sent parcel bombs by a loyalist organisation. McBride, who has a reputation as a robust advocate, had previously acted for the club's manager at a high-profile disciplinary hearing before the Scottish FA.
None of the bombs exploded, but not all lawyers made a target by sectarians are so lucky. In 1989, the Catholic Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane died after being shot 14 times by loyalist paramilitaries as he ate with his family. He was a respected civil liberties solicitor and had successfully challenged the British government in a number of important human rights cases.
His murder came less than a month after Douglas Hogg, a Home Office minister at the time, complained that some solicitors in Northern Ireland were "unduly sympathetic to the cause of the IRA", remarks widely construed as referring to Finucane. Hogg's comments appeared to ignore the fact that Finucane had also acted for a number of loyalist clients.
With remarkable prescience Séamus Mallon, the Social Democratic and Labour party MP, quickly responded that Hogg's comments could put lives at risk. "I have no doubt there are lawyers walking the streets of the north of Ireland who have become targets for assassins' bullets as result of the statement that has been made tonight," he said.
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