ABSTRACT
The idea of suppressing defendants' names is not entirely without precedent in England, although its introduction in the Sexual Offences Act 1976 in respect of rape offences was almost certainly ill-judged. A broad distinction needs first to be drawn between name suppression prior to conviction and name suppression following conviction, which in addition to the issue of freedom of the press involves consideration of sentencing policy. It is the former question that has thus far attracted muted English attention. Different considerations come into play if a defendant's name is to be suppressed following conviction. In this situation, an order of name suppression is roughly akin to a court's acceptance of a plea in mitigation. This emerges clearly from those New Zealand cases, chronicled earlier, where such applications were successful. The English precedents do not of course exactly echo their New Zealand name suppressant counterparts, as the latter tend to concern lesser degrees of criminality.
