User:FormerIP/Court Cases

Court cases that have received significant media attention or which are relevant to wider social or political issues can give rise to particular difficulties for Wikipedia. These can include finding the appropriate balance, knowing when and how to make use of primary sources and ring that Wikipedia's rules regardingcontent relating to living persons is red to.

Material directly relating to a trial
Potential encyclopaedic sources produced during a trial process may vary according to the legal jurisdiction in which the trial is held, the seriousness of matter being tried and the type of court or tribunal hearing the case. Typically, there may be evidential material (such as witness statements, photographs submitted by one of the parties to the dispute, expert opinions, copies of phone records or financial accounts, and so on), narrative material (such as a summary of the case presented by one of the parties) and a record of judgment, which may vary in length from being a very short statement to covering hundreds of pages). There may be transcripts of the proceedings held or, in some cases, video or audio recordings of the proceedings. There may also be documents, such as drafts or uncited evidence, that were prepared in connection with a case but never produced in court. Such material should be treated as self-published and should not be used except for information about the author of the material in question (where an author is identifiable).

Trial material is a primary source
Any material directly relating to a trial should be considered a primary source for the purposes of Wikipedia. A primary source may be used only with care and only to make straightforward, descriptive statements that any educated person, with access to the source but without specialist knowledge, will be able to verify are supported by the source. Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation.

Biographies of living persons
Where the Wikipedia policy on biographies of living persons applies (usually, this will be the case where parties, witnesses or others connected to the case are still alive), material directly relating to a trial may not be used unless a reliable secondary source has published the relevant information contained in the material or, in some cases, where the purpose is to augment the information contained in a secondary source.

When it is appropriate to use a primary source for the purpose of augmenting what is contained in a secondary source will often be a matter for consensus amongst editors. It might be appropriate in a case where it is clear that a secondary source is misleading or one-sided compared to a primary source. For example, if a newspaper report (a secondary source) says: "Smith stabbed Jones" and a summary judgment document (a primary source) says: "Smith stabbed Jones but this is not what caused Jones' death", then the additional information contained in the judgment is likely to be important enough to include in the article.

Where BLP applies, caution should be exercised so as not to give a wide application to the principle that primary sources may be used to augment secondary sources. Information not contained in secondary sources should not be added to an article simply on the basis that this "augments" other information about the case which has been reported in secondary sources. So, for example, where a divorce is reported in the media but the grounds for the divorce (for example, the "unreasonable behaviour" of a spouse) are not reported in detail, it would not be appropriate to refer to court documents for this information on the grounds that it "augements" what has been reported in the media.

Do not take evidence and argument at face value
When dealing with material directly related to a trial, particular care should be taken. Evidential material should not be taken at face value. The purpose of presenting evidence in a trial is for it to be tested, and so it should be remembered that evidential material may not always be a good source of fact. Witnesses sometimes lie, photographs may not show what they appear to show and it may be the case that good explanations have neutralised apparently sound physical evidence. Similarly, summaries or statements made by a party to a case (or by his or her lawyer or representative) are inherently one-sided and, for obvious reasons, should not be relied on in order to ascertain facts about a case. Generally, decisions and judgments should be considered to be the most authoritative and reliable court documents amongst those relating to any given case.

Media reports during ongoing trials
Wikipedia is not a news service or a review of media reports, and most newsworthy events do not qualify for inclusion in an encyclopaedia. In many cases, trials can last a long time. In high-profile cases, there may be frequent - even daily - media reports covering coutroom events, sometimes providing an enormous amount of detail. Wikipedia should strive to cover only what is most important and should aim to be succinct.

Media reports produced whilst a trial is ongoing should be treated with caution, because they are, by their nature, written at a time when not all the evidence has been heard and no judgment has been made in the case. Where possible, non-contemporaneous sources should be preferred, since they are likely to have a more rounded overview of the case and are likely to have made appropriate decisions about what information is and isn't important. In many cases, reports dating from the early stages of a trial (or event from before it has started) should be treated as merely speculative and of limited value as far as the facts of the case are concerned.

Media interest in a case will often vary over its duration, often with greatest focus towards the beginning and end of a trial, but also often because some event has brought a case back to public attention (for example, if a notable person has offered comment) or because of slow news days. Because of this, Wikipedia should avoid the trap of giving coverage to different aspects of a case (in particular where neutrality is an issue) solely or primarily on the basis of their coverage in the media.

For example, media coverage of the war-crimes trial of Charles Taylor was dominated by the appearance of Naomi Campbell as a witness. However, it does not follow that this should be anything more than a detail in the article about that process, because we are writing from an encyclopaedic - not journalistic - standpoint.

Inaccurate reporting
Information in secondary sources which can be falsified by reference to other secondary sources or to primary sources should not be included in on Wikipedia. This is particularly important where BLP applies.

Opinion and legal opinion
Opinions about court cases can be of two main types: specialist legal opinion (for example, and article in a law journal) and non-specialist opinion (for example, journalistic opinion). For analysis of a case (and of legal issues involved in it espscially) legal opinion should be preferred. To demonstrate that a case provoked public comment, non-specialist opinion should be preferred. In either case, material that draws on opinion-pieces should include a clear and appropraite attribution.