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The attorney general is to launch action against the newspapers, as the landlord arrested for questioning sues for libel
The attorney general, Dominic Grieve, will begin court action on Thursday against two tabloid newspapers over the way they covered the hunt for the killer of Joanna Yeates, the landscape architect whose body was found dumped on Christmas Day in a country lane near Bristol.
Grieve has instructed his team to launch contempt of court proceedings against the publishers of the Daily Mirror and the Sun because of the way they reported the circumstances surrounding the arrest of Chris Jefferies, Yeates's landlord, before the arrest of Vincent Tabak, who later admitted manslaughter but denies murder.
Contempt of court proceedings are infrequently issued against newspapers, and only invoked where it is believed that media coverage of a case could prejudice the outcome of any trial. It is more unusual still for the attorney general to take action in defence of an individual who has not been charged.
The hunt for the killer of 25-year-old Yeates, who disappeared on 17 December after an evening out with friends in Bristol, and whose body was later found in Failand, dominated the news at Christmas.
Jefferies was the first person to be arrested, a few days after the body of Yeates was discovered. He was questioned for two days, and released from police bail without charge.
Tabloid media coverage of the case as Jefferies was arrested was intense, and at the time Grieve warned that newspapers needed to be careful in their reporting. Speculation about the killing was also rife on the internet, in particular on the Twitter website.
"We need to avoid a situation where trials cannot take place or are prejudiced as a result of irrelevant or improper material being published, whether in print form or on the internet, in such a way that a trial becomes impossible," Grieve said at the time.
He added: "I don't want to comment on the precise coverage today, but I think it's important to understand that the contempt of court rules are there to protect the rule of law and the fair trial process, and they require newspapers, and indeed anyone who is covering material, to do that in a way that doesn't prejudice the possibility of a fair trial taking place at a later date."
Grieve's decision to take action is a clear indication of the concerns, at a time when tabloid journalism is battling a number of fronts, from the News of the World phone-hacking scandal to confrontations with celebrities over the use of privacy injunctions.
If found guilty, the newspapers could be fined, and individuals could be jailed.
Separately, lawyers acting on behalf of Jefferies have launched libel and privacy actions against several newspapers in relation to articles published by them in December 2010 and this January. The newspapers are the Sun, Daily Mirror, Daily Mail, Daily Express, Daily Star, Sunday Mirror, Scotsman, and Daily Record.
The attorney general's office and Jefferies' legal team declined to comment on Wednesday, before the hearing, which will be heard in front of Lord Justice Moses and Mrs Justice Dobbs.
There was no comment from Mirror Group Newspapers, or News Group Newspapers, which publishes the Sun.