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| The Tulisa Contostavlos trial collapsed but a sting can be a good thing | The Tulisa Contostavlos trial collapsed but a sting can be a good thing |
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| Anyone who enjoyed watching Paul Newman and Robert Redford carry out their complex con trick on Robert Shaw in The Sting will appreciate the guilty pleasure that can be had from seeing an unsuspecting soul get suckered. But the collapse of the trial of Tulisa Contostavlos, in which Mazher Mahmood, the “fake sheikh” of the Sun on Sunday, was criticised by the judge for his behaviour, raises the question: when is a journalist or a police officer justified in such cunning pursuits? | Anyone who enjoyed watching Paul Newman and Robert Redford carry out their complex con trick on Robert Shaw in The Sting will appreciate the guilty pleasure that can be had from seeing an unsuspecting soul get suckered. But the collapse of the trial of Tulisa Contostavlos, in which Mazher Mahmood, the “fake sheikh” of the Sun on Sunday, was criticised by the judge for his behaviour, raises the question: when is a journalist or a police officer justified in such cunning pursuits? |
| Some journalistic stings have certainly been aimed at worthy targets. The Sunday Times investigations into peers taking money in the cash-for-questions scandal was certainly justified, as was the same paper’s pursuit of Fifa officials in the web of World Cup bribery. In each case, powerful people were caught out abusing their position and a light was shone on what were clearly not isolated incidents. But this is a million miles away from entrapping a young and gullible actor or musician with bogus promises, and encouraging them into a crime that would never otherwise have happened. | Some journalistic stings have certainly been aimed at worthy targets. The Sunday Times investigations into peers taking money in the cash-for-questions scandal was certainly justified, as was the same paper’s pursuit of Fifa officials in the web of World Cup bribery. In each case, powerful people were caught out abusing their position and a light was shone on what were clearly not isolated incidents. But this is a million miles away from entrapping a young and gullible actor or musician with bogus promises, and encouraging them into a crime that would never otherwise have happened. |
| The courts are clearly becoming wary of such cases. When Edward Terry, the father of footballer John Terry, was convicted in a sting operation of supplying a small quantity of cocaine to an undercover News of the World reporter in 2010, he was fined and given community service rather than jailed. The trial judge told the court: “It is a very, very clear case of entrapment solely to create a newspaper story.” | The courts are clearly becoming wary of such cases. When Edward Terry, the father of footballer John Terry, was convicted in a sting operation of supplying a small quantity of cocaine to an undercover News of the World reporter in 2010, he was fined and given community service rather than jailed. The trial judge told the court: “It is a very, very clear case of entrapment solely to create a newspaper story.” |
| Of course, it is not only journalists who use deception to catch the unwary. In a notorious case, the police used a sting in the hunt for the murderer of Rachel Nickell, who was stabbed to death on Wimbledon Common in 1992. Detectives, acting on advice from a forensic psychologist, set up a honey-trap for Colin Stagg, who fitted the profile of a supposed killer. An attractive policewoman, “Lizzie James”, pretended to be attracted to Stagg and to be turned on by the idea that he might be Nickell’s killer. “I’m sorry, but I’m not,” Stagg told her, but it did not stop the sting being played out. Stagg spent more than a year in jail before the case was thrown out in 1994 and the judge, Mr Justice Ognall, attacked the tactic and the police for attempting to “incriminate a suspect by positive and deceptive conduct of the grossest kind”. It was another 14 years before the real murderer was caught. | |
| At the other end of the criminal spectrum, a couple of years ago, the police set up a fake pawn shop in Cricklewood, north London, staffed by undercover officers in a hunt for stolen goods. Dozens of people, many of them young – a typical offence was selling a passport for £200 and then reporting it stolen – were convicted as a result. The sting came under criticism from lawyers for putting temptation in the way of young people who were then saddled with a criminal record for the first time. | At the other end of the criminal spectrum, a couple of years ago, the police set up a fake pawn shop in Cricklewood, north London, staffed by undercover officers in a hunt for stolen goods. Dozens of people, many of them young – a typical offence was selling a passport for £200 and then reporting it stolen – were convicted as a result. The sting came under criticism from lawyers for putting temptation in the way of young people who were then saddled with a criminal record for the first time. |
| But you would need to have a very hard heart not to celebrate some of the stings carried out by Chris Morris in his Brass Eye TV series for Channel 4 back at the turn of the century. Morris, in his satire on current affairs programmes, invented a dangerous drug called “cake” which was supposedly coming in from eastern Europe and harming our young people. The drug apparently affected the area of the brain called Shatner’s Bassoon and caused a bloated neck condition called “Czech Neck” – often the key to a successful con is the detail employed, however outrageous. Morris managed to get the Conservative MP David Amess, Margaret Thatcher’s press secretary, Sir Bernard Ingham, Noel Edmonds, Bernard Manning and – yes – Rolf Harris to warn us of its dangers. Perhaps the effect of this latest case will be to demonstrate that journalists can’t have their cake and eat it. | But you would need to have a very hard heart not to celebrate some of the stings carried out by Chris Morris in his Brass Eye TV series for Channel 4 back at the turn of the century. Morris, in his satire on current affairs programmes, invented a dangerous drug called “cake” which was supposedly coming in from eastern Europe and harming our young people. The drug apparently affected the area of the brain called Shatner’s Bassoon and caused a bloated neck condition called “Czech Neck” – often the key to a successful con is the detail employed, however outrageous. Morris managed to get the Conservative MP David Amess, Margaret Thatcher’s press secretary, Sir Bernard Ingham, Noel Edmonds, Bernard Manning and – yes – Rolf Harris to warn us of its dangers. Perhaps the effect of this latest case will be to demonstrate that journalists can’t have their cake and eat it. |