Television cameras were yesterday allowed to record the sentencing of David Gilroy in the High Court in Edinburgh. This is the first time that sentencing in a UK court has been filmed for broadcast the same day – normally proceedings in Scotland are only occasionally filmed for documentaries to be broadcast weeks or months later and are heavily edited by lawyers involved in the case. Filming in most English courts has been banned since 1925.
Gilroy, who was convicted of the murder of Suzanne Pilley in May 2010, was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 18 years. Lord Bracadale’s sentencing remarks were broadcast on television only minutes later (they are widely available to stream online). Lord Bracadale allowed cameras to film proceedings, but with strict limitations. They were only allowed to focus on the judge and were not permitted to film the defendant or any other parts of the courtroom. The filming did not include any part of the evidence in the case, the delivery of the jury verdict, or mitigation prior to sentencing, but the unusual concession by Lord Bracadale in Scotland offers a glimpse of the future of media coverage of the criminal courts in England and Wales.
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