Teen killer’s jailing was viewed LIVE online in UK first: How judge allowed cameras into court to stream 16-year-old’s sentence life for rape and murder of six-year-old Alesha MacPhail
- Judge Lord Matthews’s sentencing remarks were shown live on TV and online
- Today is thought to have been the first time sentencing has been live streamed
- UK courts don’t normally allow cameras despite several examples in Scotland
- Sentencing of Karen Buckley killer Alexander Pacteau was shown on TV in 2015
The sentencing of Alesha MacPhail’s killer Aaron Campbell was broadcast live online today in what was believed to have been the first case of its kind in the UK.
Judge Lord Matthews’s sentencing remarks were shown live on the BBC News and Sky News TV stations and websites from Glasgow High Court this morning.
Previous sentencings in Scotland shown live include that of Alexander Pacteau, who murdered student Karen Buckley. Sky News were permitted to broadcast his 23-year jail sentence live from the courtroom in 2015.
But today is thought to have been the first time a sentencing has been live streamed. Courts across the country do not normally allow cameras inside.
Aaron Campbell (left) was sentenced over the death of six-year-old Alesha MacPhail (right)
It is believed that the BBC applied for permission to broadcast the remarks live from court. Once this was granted, STV and Sky were then also allowed to use the feed.
However, in 2017 a pilot run involving the BBC, ITN, Sky News and the Press Association saw them film sentencing remarks by judges at UK crown courts.
This was done on condition the footage was never used, and it was then submitted to the Ministry of Justice and the judiciary for further consideration.
Alesha’s mother Georgina Lochrane, 23, leaves Glasgow High Court with police today
But selected cases at the Court of Appeal’s Civil Division in London have been live-streamed on the English and Welsh judiciary’s YouTube channel for four months.
Judicial officials say that the online streaming, which began on November 15 last year, is ‘to improve public access to, and understanding of, the work of the courts’.
Speaking last August, senior ITN executive John Battle told the Guardian: ‘There will be protocols and safeguards in place to protect witnesses but it is inevitable there will be more filming in the courts in time to come.
‘We have now filmed in quite a number of courts and there’s not really been any negatives. We’ve shown that proceedings are not disruptive and people aren’t put off from coming to court.’
Alesha was reported missing by relatives then found dead in woods two and a half hours later
Today, Lord Matthews sentenced Campbell to life imprisonment and ordered him to spend at least 27 years behind bars before he can apply for parole.
But he warned he may never be released, with reports having ‘painted a clear picture of a cold, callous, calculating, remorseless and dangerous individual’.
The judge said Campbell had shown a ‘staggering lack of remorse’ and told the teenager: ‘Not once did I detect a flicker of emotion from you’.
Campbell was convicted at Glasgow High Court on February 21 when a jury found him guilty unanimously after a nine-day trial over her death on July 2 last year.
A spokesperson for the Judicial Office for Scotland said: ‘The BBC applied to live-stream the sentencing hearing in the case of Aaron Campbell, in accordance with the provisions of the recently introduced Protocol on Recording and Broadcasting of Proceedings in the High Court of Justiciary, and the Court considered that the application should be granted given the substantial level of public interest in the case.’