ABSTRACT
The Daily Mail’s famous branding of five young men suspected of killing the London teenager Stephen Lawrence as ‘Murderers’ is a highly illustrative example of the way in which journalism can operate in the ‘gap’ between the standards of proof in the civil and criminal law.9 Police believed they knew the identity of the killers, but did not feel they had sufficient evidence to secure conviction ‘beyond reasonable doubt’.10 Had an arrest taken place, and the ‘killers’ been found not guilty, they could not have been tried at a later date, when evidence might become available, second time because of the rule on double jeopardy. (The five were in fact never convicted.)11 A private prosecution of the same five suspects was mounted by the Lawrence family, but collapsed because most of the evidence, including police surveillance video, was circumstantial.12
