Premiership: Woodgate and Bowyer face retrial
Leeds United footballers Jonathan Woodgate and Lee Bowyer are to face a fresh trial in October on charges of attacking a student.
Mr Justice Poole, who yesterday discharged the jury in the case following an article in a Sunday newspaper which he said could be prejudicial, said the new hearing should take place at Hull Crown Court.
The judge ruled that nothing further should be published or broadcast about the article in the Sunday Mirror.
But he added: "I have no criticism whatever to make of the victims or their father.
"It is perfectly natural that they should have their views. They were not to know those views would be published when they were.
"They don't have the awareness of the media or of the significance of such views at such a time.
"They are, and should not, feel anyway responsible for the difficulties that have arisen."
The trial in Hull, in its 10th week and costing in the region of £8m, was dramatically halted on Monday and the jury of seven men and four women discharged due to the Sunday Mirror article.
The judge ruled that the second trial of 24- year-old Bowyer, Woodgate, and the latter's two friends, Paul Clifford and Neale Caveney, all aged 21 and from Middlesbrough, will start on October 8.
Clifford's counsel, Nigel Sangster QC, said the re-trial would be "vigorously opposed".
He said: "A fair trial before a jury with no preconceived views in this case is impossible."
Only Caveney of the four defendants was in court for the brief hearing. He sat in the public gallery listening to legal submissions.
He heard the judge return to criticism of the Macpherson Report over the way police treated alleged racist incidents.
The judge has stressed that there was no racial motive in the attack on 20-year-old Sarfraz Najeib in Leeds city centre in January last year.
He said yesterday that the system under which police were urged to treat attacks as racist if they were perceived to be so by the victim could be prejudicial.
He added to that today: "For all I know there may be contexts in which it is helpful.
"I simply do not know. But resource to it by the police and other authorities and in the absence of other objective evidence may pose a problem. It posed a problem in this case.
"It has the potential to do so again in other trials because it attaches a stigmatising label to the incident and by implication to the suspects and the prosecution argue the suspect cannot be fairly tried.
"It is a potentially serious problem but it is one that can and should be avoided."
The judge added there was no reason why the matters he referred to should not be published.
He said they would be reported in a way that was consistent with an order he made restricting publication of the contents of the two-page Sunday Mirror article.
Mr Najeib, of Rotherham, suffered serious injuries including a broken leg and fractured cheekbone in the alleged attack.
England international Woodgate, former England Under-21 captain Lee Bowyer, Clifford and Caveney, all denied causing grievous bodily harm with intent and affray.
