Judgment No CCZ 2/14 10 Const. Application No CCZ 78/12 and, secondly, is there an appropriate and satisfactory alternative remedy to deal with the mischief of defamation? The practical consequences that would ordinarily flow from a complaint of criminal defamation are as follows. The accused person would be investigated and face the danger of arrest. This would arise even where the alleged defamation is not serious and where the accused has an available defence to the charge. Thereafter, if the charge is prosecuted, he will be subjected to the rigours and ordeal of a criminal trial. Even if the accused is eventually acquitted, he may well have undergone the traumatising gamut of arrest, detention, remand and trial. Moreover, assuming that the accused has employed the services of a lawyer, he will also have incurred a sizeable bill of costs which will normally not be recoverable. I would accept that the foregoing tribulations are not peculiar to the offence of criminal defamation and would potentially be encountered by an accused person charged with any serious criminal offence. However, what is distinctive about criminal defamation, though not confined to that offence, is the stifling or chilling effect of its very existence on the right to speak and the right to know. This, in my view, is the more deleterious consequence of its retention in the Criminal Law Code, particularly in the present context of newspaper reportage. It cannot be denied that newspapers play a vital role in disseminating information in every society, whether open or otherwise. Part and parcel of that role is to unearth