PhD calls for name suppression rethink

What if name suppression was the rule rather than the exception?

Dr Shannon Eldridge (Whakatōhea), who graduated with a PhD from Auckland Law School, says New Zealand should scrap the public identification of criminal defendants.

The Rotorua lawyer spent several years researching name suppression at Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland while working four days a week, uncovering bias and other "troubling inconsistencies".

“When I started looking into it, I realised name suppression is very under-researched for something so controversial.”

He found that suppression applications are possibly being declined “because people are stigmatised as deserving punishment, even when they have been acquitted or are not defendants”.

Bias in suppression decisions can compound this, says Shannon, disproportionately disadvantaging Māori and female defendants compared with European, male, and corporate defendants, who are granted name suppression at higher rates.

In his thesis, Shannon proposes prohibiting the public identification of defendants and people connected to defendants in criminal justice proceedings, except to locate absconding defendants. Identifying victims, he says, would also be prohibited unless individuals opt otherwise.

“Open justice would be preserved by allowing the facts, decisions, and reasoning of cases to be published, while identities could still be shared with those who need to know.”

“When we're talking about maintaining confidence in the criminal justice system, the public need to know: is the law being applied correctly? And a defendant's name is not something you need to know to make sure the law is being applied correctly.”

He points to an example from law school: Students routinely analyse hypothetical cases involving ‘Person A’ or fictional names.

“Your ability to apply the law and understand it does not change depending on the defendant's name.”  

For Shannon, studying at Waipapa Taumata Rau also gave him an opportunity to reconnect with te ao Māori.

He says he was a product of generational thinking that devalued all things Māori, but his time at university helped show him being Māori is something to be celebrated.

“Even if I didn’t call it tikanga, [Māori] principles like whanaungatanga, have always guided me. I have so much respect and appreciation for my whānau and their role in me being where I am today.”

He also welcomes the integration of tikanga into legal education, describing its place in jurisprudence as an essential shift.  

Law wasn't always Shannon's plan.

At school, he studied scholarship-level calculus, chemistry, biology and physics and had his heart set on medical school. Then, opining on the value of water fluoridation at a Rotary speech competition, he impressed a local MP who suggested he should consider law.

“It all just clicked from there. I was thinking, ‘oh yeah, I do actually like speeches, crafting arguments, and considering different viewpoints. And having a scientific mind's still quite useful in terms of understanding the law, processing and applying it’, and suddenly, I was wanting to go to law school.”

Shannon has just been promoted to associate in the litigation team at Holland Beckett in Rotorua. He says his workplace has been fantastic in supporting his studies and offering the flexibility he needed to complete his PhD.

His supervisors, Professor James Oleson (criminology, Faculty of Arts and Education) and Associate Professor Carrie Leonetti (Auckland Law School), were incredibly valuable, providing “expert guidance, wisdom and care”.

He’s also grateful to his fiancé, parents and brother. As he writes in the acknowledgments section of his thesis:

All the love I am capable of to my brilliant partner, Ellie. If I have any semblance of sanity left, it is because of your love and support. To my parents, Susan and Zane, and my brother Hayden, I am lost without the unshakable safety I feel knowing you are there for me, always. I love you very much.

And Shannon’s love of speech and drama, which helped move him from medicine toward law, hasn’t disappeared.

This month, he starred in Deathtrap, a clever murder mystery in which he played a young would-be playwright trying to get his first piece of work out into the world.